PATHS OF GLORY 



BY IRVIN S. COBB 



NOVELS 

The Escape of Mr. Trimm 
Back Home 

WIT AND HUMOR 

Roughing It De Luxe 
Cobb's Bill of Fare 
Cobb's Anatomy 

MISCELLANY 

Paths of Glory 
Europe Revised 



GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
NEW YORK 



PATHS OF GLORY 

Impressions of War Written 
At and Near the Front 



BY 

IRVIN S. COBB 

AUTHOR OF "BACK HOME," "EUROPE REVISED, 
ETC., ETC. 




'The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 

— Thomas Ghat 



NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



^ 



DV 



COPTEIGHT, 1914 AND 1915 

By The Cinma Publishing Company 



Copyright, 1915 
By Gbobgb H. Doban Company 



™ 19 19/5 

©CIA381780 



To the Memory 
of 

MAJOR ROBERT COBB 
(Cobb's Kentucky Battery, C. S. A.) 



NOTE 

What is enclosed between these covers was 
written as a series of first-hand impressions dur- 
ing the fall and early winter of 1914 while the 
writer was on staff service for The Saturday 
Evening Post in the western theatre of the 
European War. I tried to write of war as I 
saw it at the time that I saw it, or immediately 
afterward, when the memory of what I had 
seen was fresh and vivid in my mind. 

In this volume, as here presented, no at- 
tempt has been made to follow either logically 
or chronologically the progress of events in the 
campaigning operations of which I was a witness. 
The chapters are interrelated insofar as they 
purport to be a sequence of pictures describ- 
ing some of my experiences and setting forth 
a few of my observations in Belgium, in Ger- 
many, in France and in England during the 
first three months of hostilities. 

At the outset I had no intention of under- 
taking to write a book on the war. If in the 
kindly judgment of the reader what I have 
written constitutes a book I shall be gratified. 

I. S. C. 

January, 1915. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. A Little Village Called Montignies St. Chris- 

TOPHE 13 

II. To War in a Taxicab 27 

III. Sherman Said It 52 

IV. "Marsch, Marsch, Marsch, So Geh'n Wir 

Weiter" 82 

V. Being a Guest of the Kaiser 109 

VI. With the German Wrecking Crew .... 140 

VII. The Grapes of Wrath 164 

VIII. Three Generals and a Cook 198 

IX. Viewing a Battle from a Balloon .... 226 

X. In the Trenches Before Rheims 251 

XL War de Luxe 262 

XII. The Rut of Big Guns in France ..... 294 

XIII. Those Yellow Pine Boxes 315 

XIV. The Red Glutton 334 

XV. Belgium— The Rag Doll of Europe .... 369 

XVI. Louvain the Forsaken 406 



PATHS OF GLORY 



CHAPTER I 

A LITTLE VILLAGE CALLED MON- 
TIGNIES ST. CHRISTOPHE 



WE passed through it late in the after- 
noon—this little Belgian town called 
Montignies St. Christophe — just 
twenty-four hours behind a dust- 
colored German column. I am going to try 
now to tell how it looked to us. 

I am inclined to think I passed this way a 
year before, or a little less, though I cannot be 
quite certain as to that. Traveling 'cross 
country, the country is likely to look different 
from the way it looked when you viewed it 
from the window of a railroad carriage. 

Of this much, though, I am sure: If I did 
not pass through this little town of Montignies 
St. Christophe then, at least I passed through 
fifty like it— each a single line of gray houses 
strung, like beads on a cord, along a white, 
straight road, with fields behind and elms in 
front; each with its small, ugly church, its 
wine shop, its drinking trough, its priest in 
[13] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



black, and its one lone gendarme in his pre- 
posterous housings of saber and belt and shoul- 
der straps. 

I rather imagine I tried to think up some- 
thing funny to say about the shabby grandeur 
of the gendarme or the acid flavor of the 
cooking vinegar sold at the drinking place under 
the name of wine; for that time I was supposed 
to be writing humorous articles on European 
travel. 

But now something had happened to Mon- 
tignies St. Christophe to lift it out of the dun, 
dull sameness that made it as one with so many 
other unimportant villages in this upper left- 
hand corner of the map of Europe. The war 
had come this way; and, coming so, had dealt 
it a side-slap. 

We came to it just before dusk. All day we 
had been hurrying along, trying to catch up 
with the German rear guard; but the Germans 
moved faster than we did, even though they 
fought as they went. They had gone round 
the southern part of Belgium like coopers 
round a cask, hooping it in with tight bands 
of steel. Belgium — or this part of it — was all 
barreled up now: chines, staves and bung; and 
the Germans were already across the line, beat- 
ing down the sod of France with their pelting 
feet. 

Besides we had stopped often, for there 
was so much to see and to hear. There was 
the hour we spent at Merbes-le-Chateau, where 
[141 



A LITTLE VILLAGE 



the English had been; and the hour we spent 
at La Bussiere, on the river Sambre, where a 
fight had been fought two days earlier; but 
Merbes-le-Chateau is another story and so is 
La Bussiere. Just after La Bussiere we came 
to a tiny village named Neuville and halted 
while the local Jack-of-all-trades mended for 
us an invalided tire on a bicycle. 

As we grouped in the narrow street before 
his shop, with a hiving swarm of curious vil- 
lagers buzzing about us, an improvised am- 
bulance, with a red cross painted on its side 
over the letters of a baker's sign, went up the 
steep hill at the head of the cobbled street. 
At that the women in the doorways of the 
small cottages twisted their gnarled red hands 
in their aprons, and whispered fearsomely 
among themselves, so that the sibilant sound 
of their voices ran up and down the line of 
houses in a long, quavering hiss. 

The wagon, it seemed, was bringing in a 
wounded French soldier who had been found 
in the woods beyond the river. He was one 
of the last to be found alive, which was another 
way of saying that for two days and two 
nights he had been lying helpless in the thicket, 
his stomach empty and his wounds raw. On 
each of those two nights it had rained, and 
rained hard. 

Just as we started on our way the big guns 
began booming somewhere ahead of us toward 
the southwest; so we turned in that direction. 
[15] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



We bad heard the guns distinctly in the early 
forenoon, and again, less distinctly, about 
noontime. Thereafter, for a while, there had 
been a lull in the firing; but now it was con- 
stant — a steady, sustained boom-boom-boom, 
so far away that it fell on the eardrums as a 
gentle concussion; as a throb of air, rather than 
as a real sound. For three days now we had 
been following that distant voice of the cannon, 
trying to catch up with it as it advanced, al- 
ways southward, toward the French frontier. 
Therefore we flogged the belly of our tired horse 
with the lash of a long whip, and hurried along. 

There were five of us, all Americans. The 
two who rode on bicycles pedaled ahead as 
outriders, and the remaining three followed on 
behind with the horse and the dogcart. We 
had bought the outfit that morning and we 
were to lose it that night. The horse was an 
aged mare, with high withers, and galls on 
her shoulders and fetlocks unshorn, after the 
fashion of Belgian horses; and the dogcart was 
a venerable ruin, which creaked a great pro- 
test at every turn of the warped wheels on the 
axle. We had been able to buy the two — the 
mare and the cart — only because the German 
soldiers had not thought them worth the 
taking. 

In this order, then, we proceeded. Pretty 

soon the mare grew so weary she could hardly 

lift her shaggy old legs; so, footsore as we 

were, we who rode dismounted and trudged 

[16] 



A LITTLE VILLAGE 



on, taking turns at dragging her forward by 
the bit. I presume we went ahead thus for 
an hour or more, along an interminable straight 
road and past miles of the checkered light and 
dark green fields which in harvest time make 
a great backgammon board of this whole coun- 
try of Belgium. 

The road was empty of natives — empty, too, 
of German wagon trains; and these seemed to 
us curious things, because there had until 
then been hardly a minute of the day when 
we were not passing soldiers or meeting refugees. 

Almost without warning we came on this 
little village called Montignies St. Christophe. 
A six-armed signboard at a crossroads told us 
its name — a rather impressive name ordinarily 
for a place of perhaps twenty houses, all told. 
But now tragedy had given it distinction; had 
painted that straggling frontier hamlet over 
with such colors that the picture of it is going 
to live in my memory as long as I do live. 
At the upper end of the single street, like an 
outpost, stood an old chateau, the seat, no 
doubt, of the local gentry, with a small park 
of beeches and elms round it; and here, right 
at the park entrance, we had our first intima- 
tion that there had been a fight. The gate 
stood ajar between its chipped stone pillars, 
and just inside the blue coat of a French cav- 
alry officer, jaunty and new and much braided 
with gold lace on the collar and cuffs, hung 
from the limb of a small tree. Beneath the 
[17] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



tree were a sheaf of straw in the shape of a 
bed and the ashes of a dead camp fire; and on 
the grass, plain to the eye, a plump, well- 
picked pullet, all ready for the pot or the pan. 
Looking on past these things we saw much 
scattered dunnage: Frenchmen's knapsacks, 
flannel shirts, playing cards, fagots of firewood 
mixed together like jackstraws, canteens cov- 
ered with slate-blue cloth and having queer 
little hornlike protuberances on their tops — 
which proved them to be French canteens — 
tumbled straw, odd shoes with their lacings 
undone, a top tilted service shelter of canvas; 
all the riffle of a camp that had been suddenly 
and violently disturbed. 

As I think back it seems to me that not until 
that moment had it occurred to us to regard 
closely the cottages and shops beyond the 
clumped trees of the chateau grounds. We were 
desperately weary, to begin with, and our eyes, 
those past three days, had grown used to the 
signs of misery and waste and ruin, abundant 
and multiplying in the wake of the hard- 
pounding hoofs of the conqueror. 

Now, all of a sudden, I became aware that 
this town had been literally shot to bits. 
From our side — that is to say, from the north 
and likewise from the west — the Germans had 
shelled it. From the south, plainly, the 
French had answered. The village, in between, 
had caught the full force and fury of the con- 
tending fires. Probably the inhabitants had 
[181 



A LITTLE VILLAGE 



warning; probably they fled when the German 
skirmishers surprised that outpost of French- 
men camping in the park. One imagined them 
scurrying like rabbits across the fields and 
through the cabbage patches. But they had 
left their belongings behind, all their small 
petty gearings and garnishings, to be wrecked 
in the wrenching and racking apart of their 
homes. 

A railroad track emerged from the fields 
and ran along the one street. Shells had fallen 
on it and exploded, ripping the steel rails from 
the crossties, so that they stood up all along 
in a jagged formation, like rows of snaggled 
teeth. Other shells, dropping in the road, had 
so wrought with the stone blocks that they 
were piled here in heaps, and there were de- 
pressed into caverns and crevasses four or five 
or six feet deep. 

Every house in sight had been hit again and 
again and again. One house would have its 
whole front blown in, so that we could look 
right back to the rear walls and see the pans on 
the kitchen shelves. Another house would lack 
a roof to it, and the tidy tiles that had made 
the roof were now red and yellow rubbish, 
piled like broken shards outside a potter's 
door. The doors stood open, and the windows, 
with the windowpanes all gone and in some 
instances the sashes as well, leered emptily 
like eye-sockets without eyes. 

So it went. Two of the houses had caught 
[19] 



PATHS OP GLORY 



fire and the interiors were quite burned away. 
A sodden smell of burned things came from 
the still smoking ruins; but the walls, being of 
thick stone, stood. 

Our poor tired old nag halted and sniffed 
and snorted. If she had had energy enough I 
reckon she would have shied about and run 
back the way she had come, for now, just ahead, 
lay two dead horses — a big gray and a roan — 
with their stark legs sticking out across the 
road. The gray was shot through and through 
in three places. The right fore hoof of the roan 
had been cut smack off, as smoothly as though 
done with an ax; and the stiffened leg had a 
curiously unfinished look about it, suggesting 
a natural malformation. Dead only a few 
hours, their carcasses already had begun to 
swell. The skin on their bellies was as tight 
as a drumhead. 

We forced the quivering mare past the two 
dead horses. Beyond them the road was a 
litter. Knapsacks, coats, canteens, handker- 
chiefs, pots, pans, household utensils, bottles, 
jugs and caps were everywhere. The deep 
ditches on either side of the road were clogged 
with such things. The dropped caps and the 
abandoned knapsacks were always French caps 
and French knapsacks, cast aside, no doubt, 
for a quick flight after the melee. 

The Germans had charged after shelling the 
town, and then the French had fallen back — 
or at least so we deduced from the looks of 
[201 



A LITTLE VILLAGE 



things. In the debris was no object that be- 
spoke German workmanship or German owner- 
ship. This rather puzzled us until we learned 
that the Germans, as tidy in this game of war 
as in the game of life, made it a hard-and-fast 
rule to gather up their own belongings after 
every engagement, great or small, leaving be- 
hind nothing that might serve to give the 
enemy an idea of their losses. 

We went by the church. Its spire was gone; 
but, strange to say, a small flag — the Tricolor 
of France — still fluttered from a window where 
some one had stuck it. We went by the taverne, 
or wine shop, which had a sign over its door — 
a creature remotely resembling a blue lynx. 
And through the door we saw half a loaf of 
bread and several bottles on a table. We went 
by a rather pretentious house, with pear trees 
in front of it and a big barn alongside it; and 
right under the eaves of the barn I picked up 
the short jacket of a French trooper, so new 
and fresh from the workshop that the white 
cambric lining was hardly soiled. The figure 
18 was on the collar; we decided that its wearer 
must have belonged to the Eighteenth Cavalry 
Regiment. Behind the barn we found a whole 
pile of new knapsacks — the flimsy play-soldier 
knapsacks of the French infantrymen, not half 
so heavy or a third so substantial as the heavy 
sacks of the Germans, which are all bound with 
straps and covered on the back side with un- 
dressed red bullock's hide. 
[211 



PATHS OF GLORY 



Until now we had seen, in all the silent, 
ruined village, no human being. The place 
fairly ached with emptiness. Cats sat on the 
doorsteps or in the windows, and presently 
from a barn we heard imprisoned beasts lowing 
dismally. Cows were there, with agonized 
udders and, penned away from them, famishing 
calves; but there were no dogs. We already 
had remarked this fact — that in every desolated 
village cats were thick enough; but in- 
variably the sharp-nosed, wolfish-looking Bel- 
gian dogs had disappeared along with their 
masters. And it was so in Montignies St. 
Christophe. 

On a roadside barricade of stones, chinked 
with sods of turf — a breastwork the French 
probably had erected before the fight and 
which the Germans had kicked half down — I 
counted three cats, seated side by side, washing 
their faces sedately and soberly. 

It was just after we had gone by the barricade 
that, in a shed behind the riddled shell of a 
house, which was almost the last house of the 
town, one of our party saw an old, a very old, 
woman, who peered out at us through a break 
in the wall. He called out to her in French, 
but she never answered — only continued to 
watch him from behind her shelter. He 
started toward her and she disappeared 
noiselessly, without having spoken a word. 
She was the only living person we saw in 
that town. 

[22] 



A LITTLE VILLAGE 



Just beyond the town, though, we met a 
wagon — a furniture dealer's wagon — from some 
larger community, which had been impressed 
by the Belgian authorities, military or civil, 
for ambulance service. A jaded team of horses 
drew it, and white flags with red crosses in 
their centers drooped over the wheels, fore and 
aft. One man led the near horse by the bit 
and two other men walked behind the wagon. 
All three of them had Red Cross brassards on 
the sleeves of their coats. 

The wagon had a hood on it, but was open 
at both ends. Overhauling it we saw that it 
contained two dead soldiers — French foot- 
soldiers. The bodies rested side by side on 
the wagon bed. Their feet somehow were 
caught up on the wagon seat so that their 
stiff legs, in the baggy red pants, slanted up- 
ward, and the two dead men had the look of 
being about to glide backward and out of the 
wagon. 

The blue-clad arms of one of them were 
twisted upward in a half -arc, encircling nothing; 
and as the wheels jolted over the rutted cobbles 
these two bent arms joggled and swayed 
drunkenly. The other's head was canted back 
so that, as we passed, we looked right into his 
face. It was a young face — we could tell that 
much, even through the mask of caked mud 
on the drab-white skin — and it might once 
have been a comely face. It was not comely 
now. 

[23] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



Peering into the wagon we saw that the dead 
man's face had been partly shot or shorn away — 
the lower jaw was gone; so that it had become 
an abominable thing to look on. These two had 
been men the day before. Now they were car- 
rion and would be" treated as such; for as we 
looked back we saw the wagon turn off the high 
road into a field where the wild red poppies, 
like blobs of red blood, grew thick between 
rows of neglected sugar beets. 

We stopped and watched. The wagon 
bumped through the beet patch to where, at 
the edge of a thicket, a trench had been dug. 
The diggers were two peasants in blouses, who 
stood alongside the ridge of raw upturned earth 
at the edge of the hole, in the attitude of figures 
in a painting by Millet. Their spades were 
speared upright into the mound of fresh earth. 
Behind them a stenciling of poplars rose against 
the sky line. 

We saw the bodies lifted out of the wagon. 
We saw them slide into the shallow grave, and 
saw the two diggers start at their task of 
filling in the hole. 

Not until then did it occur to any one of 
us that we had not spoken to the men in 
charge of the wagon, or they to us. There was 
one detached house, not badly battered, along- 
side the road at the lower edge of the field 
where the burial took place. It had a shield 
on its front wall bearing the Belgian arms and 
words to denote that it was a customs house. 
[24] 



A LITTLE VILLAGE 



A glance at our map showed us that at this 
point the French boundary came up in a 
V-shaped point almost to the road. Had the 
gravediggers picked a spot fifty yards farther 
on for digging their trench, those two dead 
Frenchmen would have rested in the soil of 
their own country. 

The sun was almost down by now, and its 
slanting rays slid lengthwise through the 
elm-tree aisles along our route. Just as it 
disappeared we met a string of refugees — men, 
women and children — all afoot, all bearing 
pitiably small bundles. They limped along 
silently in a straggling procession. None of 
them was weeping; none of them apparently 
had been weeping. During the past ten days 
I had seen thousands of such refugees, and I 
had yet to hear one of them cry out or com- 
plain or protest. 

These who passed us now were like that. 
Their heavy peasant faces expressed dumb be- 
wilderment — nothing else. They went on up 
the road into the gathering dusk as we went 
down, and almost at once the sound of their 
clunking tread died out behind us. Without 
knowing certainly, we nevertheless imagined 
they were the dwellers of Montignies St. 
Christophe going back to the sorry shells 
that had been their homes. 

An hour later we passed through the back 
lines of the German camp and entered the 
town of Beaumont, to find that the General 
[25] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



Staff of a German army corps was quartered 
there for the night, and that the main force of 
the column, after sharp fighting, had already 
advanced well beyond the frontier. France was 
invaded. 



[26] 



CHAPTER II 
TO WAR IN A TAXICAB 



IN a taxicab we went to look for this war. 
There were four of us, not counting the 
chauffeur, who did not count. It was a 
regular taxicab, with a meter on it, and a 
little red metal flag which might be turned up 
or turned down, depending on whether the cab 
was engaged or at liberty; and he was a regular 
chauffeur. 

We, the passengers, wore straw hats and 
light suits, and carried no baggage. No one 
would ever have taken us for war correspon- 
dents out looking for war. So we went; and, 
just when we were least expecting it, we found 
that war. Perhaps it would be more exact to 
say it found us. We were four days getting 
back to Brussels, still wearing our straw hats, 
but without any taxicab. The fate of that 
taxicab is going to be one of the unsolved 
mysteries of the German invasion of Bel- 
gium. 

[27] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



From the hour when the steamer St. Paul 
left New York, carrying probably the most 
mixed assortment of passengers that traveled 
on a single ship since Noah sailed the Ark, we 
on board expected hourly to sight something 
that would make us spectators of actual hos- 
tilities. The papers that morning were full of 
rumors of an engagement between English 
ships and German ships somewhere off the 
New England coast. 

Daily we searched the empty seas until our 
eyes hurt us; but, except that we had one 
ship's concert and one brisk gale, and that 
just before dusk on the fifth day out, the 
weather being then gray and misty, we saw 
wallowing along, hull down on the starboard 
bow, an English cruiser with two funnels, 
nothing happened at all. Even when we landed 
at Liverpool nothing happened to suggest that 
we had reached a country actively engaged in 
war, unless you would list the presence of a 
few khaki-clad soldiers on the landing stage 
and the painful absence of porters to handle 
our baggage as evidences of the same. I re- 
member seeing Her Grace the Duchess of 
Marlborough sitting hour after hour on a bag- 
gage truck, waiting for her heavy luggage to 
come off the tardy tender and up the languid 
chute into the big dusty dockhouse. 

I remember, also, seeing women, with their 
hats flopping down in their faces and their hair 
all streaming, dragging huge trunks across the 
[281 



TO WAR IN A TAXICAB 



floor; and if all of us had not been in the same 
distressful fix we could have appreciated the 
humor of the spectacle of a portly high dig- 
nitary of the United States Medical Corps 
shoving a truck piled high with his belongings, 
and shortly afterward, with the help of his 
own wife, loading them on the roof of an infirm 
and wheezy taxicab. 

From Liverpool across to London we traveled 
through a drowsy land burdened with bumper 
crops of grain, and watched the big brown 
hares skipping among the oat stacks; and late 
at night we came to London. In London 
next day there were more troops about than 
common, and recruits were drilling on the 
gravel walks back of Somerset House; and the 
people generally moved with a certain sober 
restraint, as people do who feel the weight of 
a heavy and an urgent responsibility. Other- 
wise the London of wartime seemed the Lon- 
don of peacetime. 

So within a day our small party, still seeking 
to slip into the wings of the actual theater of 
events rather than to stay so far back behind 
the scenes, was aboard a Channel ferryboat 
bound for Ostend, and having for fellow trav- 
elers a few Englishmen, a tall blond princess of 
some royal house of Northern Europe, and any 
number of Belgians going home to enlist. In 
the Straits of Dover, an hour or so out from 
Folkestone, we ran through a fleet of British 
warships guarding the narrow roadstead be- 
[29] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



tween France and England; and a torpedo-boat 
destroyer sidled up and took a look at us. 

Just off Dunkirk a French scout ship talked 
with us by the language of the whipping signal 
flags; but the ordinary Channel craft came and 
went without hindrance or seeming fear, and 
again it was hard for us to make ourselves be- 
lieve that we had reached a zone where the 
physical, tangible business of war went forward. 

And Ostend and, after Ostend, the Belgian 
interior — those were disappointments too; for 
at Ostend bathers disported on the long, shin- 
ing beach and children played about the sanded 
stretch. And, though there were soldiers in 
sight, one always expects soldiers in European 
countries. No one asked to see the passports 
we had brought with us, and the customs officers 
gave our hand baggage the most perfunctory 
of examinations. Hardly five minutes had 
elapsed after our landing before we were 
steaming away on our train through a landscape 
which, to judge by its appearance, might have 
known only peace, and naught but peace, for 
a thousand placid years. 

It is true we saw during that ride few able- 
bodied male adults, either in the towns through 
which we rushed or in the country. There were 
priests occasionally and old, infirm men or half- 
grown boys; but of men in their prime the land 
had been drained to fill up the army of defense 
then on the other side of Belgium — toward 
Germany — striving to hold the invaders in 
[301 



TO WAR IN A TAXICA: 



check until the French and English might come 
up. The yellow-ripe grain stood in the fields, 
heavy-headed and drooping with seed. The 
russet pears and red apples bent the limbs of 
the fruit trees almost to earth. Every visible 
inch of soil was under cultivation, of the pain- 
fully intensive European sort; and there re- 
mained behind to garner the crops only the 
peasant women and a few crippled, aged grand- 
sires. It was hard for us to convince ourselves 
that any event out of the ordinary beset this 
country. No columns of troops passed along 
the roads; no camps of tents lifted their peaked 
tops above the hedges. In seventy-odd miles 
we encountered one small detachment of sol- 
diers — they were at a railroad station — and 
one Red Cross flag. 

As for Brussels — why, Brussels at first glance 
was more like a city making a fete than the 
capital of a nation making war. The flags 
which were displayed everywhere; the crowds 
in the square before the railroad station; the 
multitudes of boy scouts running about; the 
uniforms of Belgian volunteers and regulars; 
the Garde Civique, in their queer-looking cos- 
tumes, with funny little derby hats, all braid- 
trimmed — gave to the place a holiday air. 
After nightfall, when the people of Brussels 
flocked to the sidewalk cafes and sat at little 
round tables under awnings, drinking light 
drinks a la Parisienne, this impression was 
heightened. 

[31] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



We dined in the open air ourselves, finding 
the prices for food and drink to be both mod- 
erate and modest, and able to see nothing on 
the surface which suggested that the life of 
these people had been seriously disturbed. 
Two significant facts, however, did obtrude 
themselves on us: Every minute or two, as we 
dined, a young girl or an old gentleman would 
come to us, rattling a tin receptacle with a slot 
in the top through which coins for the aid of 
the widows and orphans of dead soldiers 
might be dropped; and when a little later 
we rode past the royal palace we saw 
that it had been converted into a big 
hospital for the wounded. That night, also, 
the government ran away to Antwerp; but 
of this we knew nothing until the following 
morning. 

Next day we heard tales: Uhlans had been 
seen almost in the suburbs ; three German spies, 
disguised as nuns, had been captured, tried, 
convicted and were no longer with us; sentries 
on duty outside the residence of the American 
Minister had fired at a German aeroplane dart- 
ing overhead; French troops were drawing in 
to the northward and English soldiers were 
hurrying up from the south; trainloads of 
wounded had been brought in under cover of 
the night and distributed among the improvised 
hospitals; but, conceding these things to be 
true, we knew of them only at second hand. 
By the evidence of what we ourselves saw we 
[32] 



TO WAR IN A TAXICAB 



were able to note few shifts in the superficial 
aspects of the city. 

The Garde Civique seemed a trifle more 
numerous than it had been the evening before; 
citizen volunteers, still in civilian garb, ap- 
peared on the streets in awkward squads, 
carrying their guns and side arms clumsily; 
and when, in Minister Brand Whitlock's car, we 
drove out the beautiful Avenue Louise, we found 
soldiers building a breast-high barricade across 
the head of the roadway where it entered the Bois ; 
also, they were weaving barbed-wire entangle- 
ments among the shade trees. That was all. 

And then, as though to offset these added sug- 
gestions of danger, we saw children playing about 
quietly behind the piled sand-bags, guarded 
by plump Flemish nursemaids, and smart dog- 
carts constantly passed and repassed us, filled 
with well-dressed women, and with flowers 
stuck in the whip-sockets. 

The nearer we got to this war the farther 
away from us it seemed to be. We began to 
regard it as an elusive, silent, secretive, hide- 
and-go-seek war, which would evade us always. 
We resolved to pursue it into the country to 
the northward, from whence the Germans were 
reported to be advancing, crushing back the 
outnumbered Belgians as they came onward; 
but when we tried to secure a laissez passer at 
the gendarmerie, where until then an accredited 
correspondent might get himself a laissez 
passer, we bumped into obstacles. 
[33J 



PATHS OF GLORY 



In an inclosed courtyard behind a big gray 
building, among loaded wagons of supplies and 
munching cart horses, a kitchen table teetered 
unsteadily on its legs on the rough cobbles. 
On the table were pens and inkpots and coffee 
cups and beer bottles and beer glasses; and 
about it sat certain unkempt men in resplendent 
but unbrushed costumes. Joseph himself — the 
Joseph of the coat of many colors, no less — 
might have devised the uniforms they wore. 
With that setting the picture they made there 
in the courtyard was suggestive of stage scenes 
in plays of the French Revolution. 

They were polite enough, these piebald gen- 
tlemen, and they considered our credentials 
with an air of mildly courteous interest; but 
they would give us no passes. There had been 
an order. Who had issued it, or why, was not 
for us to know. Going away from there, all 
downcast and disappointed, we met a French 
cavalryman. He limped along in his high 
dragoon boots, walking with the wide-legged 
gait of one who had bestraddled leather for 
many hours and was sore from it. His horse, 
which he led by the bridle, stumbled with 
weariness. A proud boy scout was serving as 
his guide. He was the only soldier of 'any 
army, except the Belgian, we had seen so far, 
and we halted our car and watched him until 
he disappeared. 

However* seeing one tired French dragoon 
was not seeing the war; and we chafed that night 
[34] 



TO WAR IN A TAXICAB 



at the delay which kept us penned as prisoners 
in this handsome, outwardly quiet city. As we 
figured it we might be housed up here for days 
or weeks and miss all the operations in the field. 
When morning came, though, we discovered 
that the bars were down again, and that cer- 
tificates signed by the American consul would 
be sufficient to carry us as far as the outlying 
suburbs at least. 

Securing these precious papers, then, without 
delay we chartered a rickety red taxicab for 
the day; and piling in we told the driver to 
take us eastward as far as he could go before 
the outposts turned us back. He took us, 
therefore, at a buzzing clip through the Bois, 
along one flank of the magnificent Forest of 
Soigne, with its miles of green-trunked beech 
trees, and by way of the royal park of Ter- 
vueren. From the edge of the thickly settled 
district onward we passed barricade after 
barricade — some built of newly felled trees; 
some of street cars drawn across the road in 
double rows; some of street cobbles chinked 
with turf; and some of barbed wire — all of 
them, even to our inexperienced eyes, seeming 
but flimsy defenses to interpose against a 
force of any size or determination. But the 
Belgians appeared to set great store by these 
playthings. 

Behind each of them was a mixed group of 
soldiers — Garde Civique, gendarmes and 
burgher volunteers. These latter mainly car- 
[35] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



ried shotguns and wore floppy blue caps and 
long blue blouses, which buttoned down their 
backs with big horn buttons, like little girls' 
pinafores. There was, we learned, a touch of 
sentiment about the sudden appearance of 
those most unsoldierly looking vestments. In 
the revolution of 1830, when the men of 
Brussels fought the Hollanders all morning, 
stopped for dinner at midday and then fought 
again all afternoon, and by alternately fighting 
and eating wore out the enemy and won their 
national independence, they wore such caps 
and such back-buttoning blouses. And so all 
night long women in the hospitals had sat up 
cutting out and basting together the garments 
of glory for their menfolk. 

No one offered to turn us back, and only 
once or twice did a sentry insist on looking at 
our passes. In the light of fuller experiences I 
know now that when a city is about to fall 
into an enemy's hands the authorities relax 
their vigilance and freely permit noncombatants 
to depart therefrom, presumably on the as- 
sumption that the fewer individuals there 
are in the place when the conqueror does come 
the fewer the problems of caring for the resi- 
dent population will be. But we did not know 
this mighty significant fact; and, suspecting 
nothing, the four innocents drove blithely on 
until the city lay behind us and the country 
lay before us, brooding in the bright sunlight 
and all empty and peaceful, except for thin 
[361 



TO WAR IN A TAXICAB 



scattering detachments of gayly clad Belgian 
infantrymen through which we passed. 

Once or twice tired, dirty stragglers, lying 
at the roadside, raised a cheer as they recog- 
nized the small American flag that fluttered 
from our taxi's door; and once we gave a lift 
to a Belgian bicycle courier, who had grown 
too leg-weary to pedal his machine another 
inch. He was the color of the dust through 
which he had ridden, and his face under its 
dirt mask was thin and drawn with fatigue; 
but his racial enthusiasm endured, and when 
we dropped him he insisted on shaking hands 
with all of us, and offering us a drink out of a 
very warm and very grimy bottle of something 
or other. 

All of a sudden, rounding a bend, we came 
on a little valley with one of the infrequent 
Belgian brooks bisecting it; and this whole 
valley was full of soldiers. There must have 
been ten thousand of them — cavalry, foot, ar- 
tillery, baggage trains, and all. Quite near us 
was ranged a battery of small rapid-fire guns; 
and the big rawboned dogs that had hauled 
them there were lying under the wicked-looking 
little pieces. We had heard a lot about the 
dog-drawn guns of the Belgians, but these 
were the first of them we had seen. 

Lines of cavalrymen were skirting crosswise 

over the low hill at the other side of the valley, 

and against the sky line the figures of horses 

and men stood out clear and fine. It all seemed 

[37] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



a splendid martial sight; but afterward, com- 
paring this force with the army into whose 
front we were to blunder unwittingly, we 
thought of it as a little handful of toy soldiers 
playing at war. We never heard what became 
of those Belgians. Presumably at the advance 
of the Germans coming down on them count- 
lessly, like an Old Testament locust plague, 
they fell back and, going round Brussels, went 
northward toward Antwerp, to join the main 
body of their own troops. Or they may have 
reached the lines of the Allies, to the south 
and westward, toward the French frontier. One 
guess would be as good as the other. 

One of the puzzling things about the early 
rnid-August stages of the war was the almost 
instantaneous rapidity with which the Belgian 
army, as an army, disintegrated and vanished. 
To-day it was here, giving a good account of 
itself against tremendous odds, spending itself 
in driblets to give the Allies a chance to get up. 
To-morrow it was utterly gone. 

Still without being halted or delayed we went 
briskly on. We had topped the next rise 
commanding the next valley, and — except for 
a few stragglers and some skirmishers — the 
Belgians were quite out of sight, when our 
driver stopped with an abruptness which piled 
his four passengers in a heap and pointed off 
to the northwest, a queer, startled, frightened 
look on his broad Flemish face. There was 
smoke there along the horizon — much smoke, 
[38] 



TO WAR IN A TAXICAB 



both white and dark; and, even as the throb 
of the motor died away to a purr, the sound 
of big guns came to us in a faint rumbling, borne 
from a long way off by the breeze. 

It was the first time any one of us, except 
McCutcheon, had ever heard a gun fired in 
battle; and it was the first intimation to 
any of us that the Germans were so near. 
Barring only venturesome mounted scouts 
we had supposed the German columns were 
many kilometers away. A brush between 
skirmishers was the best we had counted on 
seeing. 

Right here we parted from our taxi driver. 
He made it plain to us, partly by words and 
partly by signs, that he personally was not 
looking for any war. Plainly he was one who 
specialized in peace and the pursuits of peace. 
Not even the proffered bribe of a doubled or a 
tripled fare availed to move him one rod toward 
those smoke clouds. He turned his car round 
so that it faced toward Brussels, and there he 
agreed to stay, caring for our light overcoats, 
until we should return to him. I wonder how 
long he really did stay. 

And I have wondered, in idle moments since, 
what he did with our overcoats. Maybe he 
fled with the automobile containing two English 
moving-picture operators which passed us at 
that moment, and from which floated back a 
shouted warning that the Germans were com- 
ing. Maybe he stayed too long and was 
[39] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



gobbled up — but I doubt it. He had an in- 
stinct for safety. 

As we went forward afoot the sound of the 
firing grew clearer and more distinct. We 
could now hear quite plainly the grunting belch 
of the big pieces and, in between, the chattering 
voice of rapid-fire guns. Long-extended, stam- 
mering, staccato sounds, which we took to 
mean rifle firing, came to our ears also. Among 
ourselves we decided that the white smoke 
came from the guns and the black from burning 
buildings or hay ricks. Also we agreed that the 
fighting was going on beyond the spires and 
chimneys of a village on the crest of the hill 
immediately ahead of us. We could make out 
a white church and, on past it, lines of gray 
stone cottages. 

In these deductions we were partly right 
and partly wrong; we had hit on the approxi- 
mate direction of the fighting, but it was not 
a village that lay before us. What we saw 
was an outlying section of the city of Louvain, 
a place of fifty thousand inhabitants, destined 
within ten days to be turned into a waste of 
sacked ruins. 

There were fields of tall, rank winter cab- 
bages on each side of the road, and among the 
big green leaves we saw bright red dots. We 
had to look a second time before we realized 
that these dots were not the blooms of the wild 
red poppies that are so abundant in Belgium, 
but the red-tipped caps of Belgian soldiers 
[40] 



TO WAR IN A TAXICAB 



squatting in the cover of the plants. None of 
them looked toward us; all of them looked 
toward those mounting walls of smoke. 

Now, too, we became aware of something 
else — aware of a procession that advanced 
toward us. It was the head of a two-mile long 
line of refugees, fleeing from destroyed or 
threatened districts on beyond. At first, in 
scattered, straggling groups, and then in solid 
columns, they passed us unendingly, we going 
one way, they going the other. Mainly they 
were afoot, though now and then a farm wagon 
would bulk above the weaving ranks; and it 
would be loaded with bedding and furniture 
and packed to overflowing with old women 
and babies. One wagon lacked horses to draw 
it, and six men pulled in front while two men 
pushed at the back to propel it. Some of the 
fleeing multitude looked like townspeople, but 
the majority plainly were peasants. And of 
these latter at least half wore wooden shoes 
so that the sound of their feet on the cobbled 
roadbed made a clattering chorus that at times 
almost drowned out the hiccuping voices of the 
guns behind them. 

Occasionally there would be a man shoving 
a barrow, with a baby and possibly a muddle of 
bedclothing in the barrow together. Every 
woman carried a burden of some sort, which 
might be a pack tied in a cloth or a cheap 
valise stuffed to bursting, or a baby — though 
generally it was a baby; and nearly every man, 
[41] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



in addition to his load of belongings, had an 
umbrella under his arm. In this rainy land the 
carrying of umbrellas is a habit not easily 
shaken off; and, besides, most of these people 
had slept out at least one night and would 
probably sleep out another, and an umbrella 
makes a sort of shelter if you have no better. 
I figure I saw a thousand umbrellas if I saw one, 
and the sight of them gave a strangely incon- 
gruous touch to the thing. 

Yes, it gave a grotesque touch to it. The 
spectacle inclined one to laugh, almost making 
one forget for a moment that here in this spec- 
tacle one beheld the misery of war made con- 
crete; that in the lorn state of these poor folks 
its effects were focused and made vivid; that, 
while in some way it touched every living 
creature on the globe, here it touched them 
directly. 

All the children, except the sick ones and the 
very young ones, walked, and most of them 
carried small bundles too. I saw one little 
girl, who was perhaps six years old, with a 
heavy wooden clock in her arms. The legs of 
the children wavered under them sometimes 
from weakness or maybe weariness, but I did 
not hear a single child whimper, or see a 
single woman who wept, or hear a single man 
speak above a half whisper. 

They drifted on by us, silent all, except for 
the sound of feet and wheels; and, as I read 
the looks on their faces, those faces expressed 
[42] 



TO WAR IN A TAXICAB 



no emotion except a certain numbed, resigned, 
bovine bewilderment. Far back in the line 
we met two cripples, hobbling along side by 
side as though for company; and still farther 
back a Belgian soldier came, like a rear guard, 
with his gun swung over his back and his 
sweaty black hair hanging down in his eyes. 

In an undertone he was apparently explaining 
something to a little bow-legged man in black, 
with spectacles, who trudged along in his 
company. He was the lone soldier we saw 
among the refugees — all the others were civ- 
ilians. 

Only one man in all the line hailed us. 
Speaking so low that we could scarcely catch 
his words, he said in broken English: 

"M'sieurs, the French are in Brussels, are 
they not?" 

"No," we told him. 

"The British, then— they must be there by 

now?" 

"No; the British aren't there, either." 

He shook his head, as though puzzled, and 
started on. 

"How far away are the Germans?" we asked 
him. 

He shook his head again. 

"I cannot say," he answered; "but I think 
they must be close behind us. I had a brother 
in the army at Liege," he added, apparently 
apropos of nothing. And then he went on, still 
shaking his head and with both arms tightly 
[43] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



clasped round a big bundle done up in cloth, 
which he held against his breast. 

Very suddenly the procession broke off, as 
though it had been chopped in two; and almost 
immediately after that the road turned into a 
street and we were between solid lines of small 
cottages, surrounded on all sides by people 
who fluttered about with the distracted aim- 
lessness of agitated barnyard fowls. They 
babbled among themselves, paying small heed 
to us. An automobile tore through the street 
with its horn blaring, and raced by us, going 
toward Brussels at forty miles an hour. A well- 
dressed man in the front seat yelled out some- 
thing to us as he whizzed past, but the words 
were swallowed up in the roaring of his engine. 

Of our party only one spoke French, and 
he spoke it indifferently. We sought, there- 
fore, to find some one who understood English. 
In a minute we saw the black robe of a priest; 
and here, through the crowd, calm and dignified 
where all others were fairly befuddled with 
excitement, he came — a short man with a 
fuzzy red beard and a bright blue eye. 

We hailed him, and the man who spoke a 
little French explained our case. At once he 
turned about and took us into a side street; 
and even in their present state the men and 
women who met us remembered their manners 
and pulled off their hats and bowed before 
him. 

At a door let into a high stone wall he 
[44] 



t;o war in a taxicab 



stopped and rang a bell. A brother in a brown 
robe came and unbarred the gate for us, and 
our guide led us under an arched alley and out 
again into the open; and behold we were in 
another world from the little world of panic 
that we had just left. There was a high- 
walled inclosure with a neglected tennis court 
in the middle, and pear and plum trees burdened 
with fruit; and at the far end, beneath a little 
arbor of vines, four priests were sitting together. 

At sight of us they rose and came to us, and 
shook hands all round. Almost before we knew 
it we were in a bare little room behind the 
ancient Church of Saint Jacques, and one of the 
fathers was showing us a map in order that we 
might better understand the lay of the land; 
and another was uncorking a bottle of good 
red wine, which he brought up from the 
cellar, with a halo of mold on the cork and a 
mantle of cobwebs on its sloping shoulders. 

It seemed that the Rev. Dom. Marie-Joseph 
Montaigne — I give the name that was on his 
card— could speak a little English. He told 
us haltingly that the smoke we had seen came 
from a scene of fighting somewhere to the east- 
ward of Louvain. He understood that the 
Prussians were quite near, but he had seen none 
himself and did not expect they would enter 
the town before nightfall. As for the firing, 
that appeared to have ceased. And, sure 
enough, when we listened we could no longer 
catch the sound of the big guns. Nor did we 
[45] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



hear them again during that day. Over his 
glass the priest spoke in his faulty English, 
stopping often to feel for a word; and when he 
had finished his face worked and quivered 
with the emotion he felt. 

"This war — it is a most terrible thing that 
it should come on Belgium, eh? Our little 
country had no quarrel with any great country. 
We desired only that we should be left alone. 

"Our people here — they are not bad people. 
I tell you they are very good people. All the 
week they work and work, and on Sunday they 
go to church; and then maybe they take a little 
walk. 

"You Americans now — you come from a 
very great country. Surely, if the worst should 
come America will not let our country perish 
from off the earth, eh! Is not that so?" 

Fifteen minutes later we were out again facing 
the dusty little square of Saint Jacques; and 
now of a sudden peace seemed to have fallen 
on the place. The wagons of a little traveling 
circus were ranged in the middle of the square 
with no one about to guard them; and across 
the way was a small tavern. 

All together we discovered we were hungry. 
We had had bread and cheese and coffee, and 
were lighting some very bad native cigars, 
when the landlord burst in on us, saying in a 
quavering voice that some one passing had told 
him a squad of seven German troopers had been 
seen in the next street but one. He made a 
[46] 



TO WAR IN A TAXICAB 



gesture as though to invoke the mercy of 
Heaven on us all, and ran out again, casting 
a carpet slipper in his flight and leaving it 
behind him on the floor. 

So we followed, not in the least believing 
that any Germans had really been sighted; but 
in the street we saw a group of perhaps fifty 
Belgian soldiers running up a narrow sideway, 
trailing their gun butts behind them on the 
stones. We figured they were hurrying for- 
ward to the other side of town to help hold 
back the enemy. 

A minute later seven or eight more soldiers 
crossed the road ahead of us and darted up 
an alley with the air and haste of men de- 
sirous of being speedily out of sight. We had 
gone perhaps fifty feet beyond the mouth of 
this alley when two men, one on horseback 
and one on a bicycle, rode slowly and sedately 
out of another alley, parallel to the first one, 
and swung about with their backs to us. 

I imagine we had watched the newcomers 
for probably fifty seconds before it dawned on 
any of us that they wore gray helmets and gray 
coats, and carried arms — and were Germans. 
Precisely at that moment they both turned so 
that they faced us; and the man on horseback 
lifted a carbine from a holster and half swung 
it in our direction. 

Realization came to us that here we were, 
pocketed. There were armed Belgians in an 
alley behind us and armed Germans in the 
[47] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



street before us ; and we were nicely in between. 
If shooting started the enemies might miss 
each other, but they could not very well miss 
us. Two of our party found a courtyard and 
ran through it. The third pressed close up 
against a house front and I made for the half- 
open door of a shop. 

Just as I reached it a woman on the inside 
slammed it in my face and locked it. I never 
expect to see her again ; but that does not mean 
that I ever expect to forgive her. The next 
door stood open, and from within its shelter 
I faced about to watch for what might befall. 
Nothing befell except that the Germans rode 
slowly past me, both vigilantly keen in poise 
and look, both with weapons unshipped. 

I got an especially good view of the cavalry- 
man. He was a tall, lean, blond young man, 
with a little yellow mustache and high cheek- 
bones like an Indian's; and he was sunburned 
until he was almost as red as an Indian. The 
sight of that limping French dragoon the day 
before had made me think of a picture by 
Meissonier or Detaille, but this German put 
me in mind of one of Frederic Remington's 
paintings. Change his costume a bit, and 
substitute a slouch hat for his flat-topped 
lancer's cap, and he might have cantered bodily 
out of one of Remington's canvases. 

He rode past me — he and his comrade on 
the wheel — and in an instant they were gone 
into another street, and the people who had 
[48] 



TO WAR IN A TAXICAB 



scurried to cover at their coming were out 
again behind them, with craned necks and 
startled faces. 

Our group reassembled itself somehow and 
followed after those two Germans who could 
jog along so serenely through a hostile town. 
We did not crowd them — our health forbade 
that — but we now desired above all things to 
get back to our taxicab, two miles or more 
away, before our line of retreat should be cut 
off. But we had tarried too long at our bread 
and cheese. 

When we came to where the street leading 
to the Square of Saint Jacques joined the 
street that led in turn to the Brussels road, 
all the people there were crouching in their 
doorways as quiet as so many mice, all looking 
in the direction in which we hoped to go, all 
pointing with their hands. No one spoke, but 
the scuffle of wooden-shod feet on the flags 
made a sliding, slithering sound, which some- 
way carried a message of warning more forcible 
than any shouted word or sudden shriek. 

We looked where their fingers aimed, and, 
as we looked, a hundred feet away through a 
cloud of dust a company of German foot sol- 
diers swung across an open grassplot, where 
a little triangular park was, and straightened 
out down the road to Brussels, singing snatches 
of a German marching song as they went. 

And behind them came trim officers on hand- 
some, high-headed horses, and more infantry; 
[49] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



then a bicycle squad; then cavalry, and then 
a light battery, bumping along over the rutted 
stones, with white dust blowing back from 
under its wheels in scrolls and pennons. 

Then a troop of Uhlans came, with nodding 
lances, following close behind the guns; and at 
sight of them a few men and women, clustered 
at the door of a little wine shop calling itself 
the Belgian Lion, began to hiss and mutter, 
for among these people, as we knew already, 
the Uhlans had a hard name. 

At that a noncommissioned officer — a big 
man with a neck on him like a bison and 
a red, broad, menacing face — turned in his 
saddle and dropped the muzzle of his black 
automatic on them. They sucked their hisses 
back down their frightened gullets so swiftly 
that the exertion well-nigh choked them, and 
shrank flat against the wall; and, for all the 
sound that came from them until he had hol- 
stered his hardware and trotted on, they might 
have been dead men and women. 

Just then, from perhaps half a mile on ahead, 
a sharp clatter of rifle fire sounded — pop! pop! 
pop! — and then a rattling volley. We saw the 
Uhlans snatch out their carbines and gallop 
forward past the battery into the dust curtain. 
And as it swallowed them up we, who had 
come in a taxicab looking for the war, knew 
that we had found it; and knew, too, that our 
chances of ever seeing that taxicab again were 
most exceeding small. 

[50] 



TO WAR IN A TAXICAB 



We had one hope — that this might merely 
be a reconnoissance in force, and that when 
it turned back or turned aside we might yet 
slip through and make for Brussels afoot. 
But it was no reconnoissance — it was Germany 
up and moving. We stayed in Louvain 
three days, and for three days we watched 
the streaming past of the biggest army we 
had ever seen, and the biggest army beleaguered 
Belgium had ever seen, and one of the biggest, 
most perfect armies the world has ever seen. 
We watched the gray-clad columns pass until 
the mind grew numb at the prospect of com- 
puting their number. To think of trying to 
count them was like trying to count the leaves 
on a tree or the pebbles on a path. 

They came and came, and kept on coming, 
and their iron-shod feet flailed the earth to 
powder, and there was no end to them. 



[511 



CHAPTER III 
SHERMAN SAID IT 



UNDOUBTEDLY Sherman said it. This 
is my text and as illustration for my 
text I take the case of the town of La 
Buissiere. 
The Germans took the town of La Buissiere 
after stiff fighting on August twenty-fourth. 
I imagine that possibly there was a line in the 
dispatches telling of the fight there; but at 
that I doubt it, because on that same date a 
few miles away a real battle was raging be- 
tween the English rear guard, under Sir John 
French, of the retreating army of the Allies, 
falling back into France, and the Germans. 
Besides, in the sum total of this war the fall 
of La Buissiere hardly counts. You might 
say it represents a semicolon in the story of 
the campaign. Probably no future historian 
will give it so much as a paragraph. In our 
own Civil War it would have been worth a 
page in the records anyway. Here upward of 
[52] 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



three hundred men on both sides were killed 
and wounded, and as many more Frenchmen 
were captured; and the town, when taken, 
gave the winners the control of the river 
Sambre for many miles east and west. Here, 
also, was a German charge with bayonets up a 
steep and well-defended height; and after that 
a hand-to-hand melee with the French de- 
fenders on the poll of the hill. 

But this war is so big a thing, as wars go, 
that an engagement of this size is likely to be 
forgotten in a day or a week. Yet, I warrant 
you, the people of La Buissiere will not forget 
it. Nor shall we forget it who came that way 
in the early afternoon of a flawless summer day. 
Let me try to recreate La Buissiere for you, 
reader. Here the Sambre, a small, orderly 
stream, no larger or broader or wider than a 
good-sized creek would be in America, flows 
for a mile or two almost due east, and west. 
The northern bank is almost flat, with low hills 
rising on beyond like the rim of a saucer. 
The town— most of it— is on this side. On 
the south the land lifts in a moderately stiff 
bluff, perhaps seventy feet high, with wooded 
edges, and extending off and away in a plateau, 
where trees stand in well-thinned groves, and 
sunken roads meander between fields of hops 
and grain and patches of cabbages and sugar 
beets. As for the town, it has perhaps twenty- 
five hundred people— Walloons and Flemish folk 
—living in tall, bleak, stone houses built flush 
[53] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



with the little crooked streets. Invariably 
these houses are of a whitish gray color; almost 
invariably they are narrow and cramped- 
looking, with very peaky gables, somehow 
suggesting flat-chested old men standing in 
close rows, with their hands in their pockets 
and their shoulders shrugged up. 

A canal bisects one corner of the place, and 
spanning the river there are — or were — three 
bridges, one for the railroad and two for foot 
and vehicular travel. There is a mill which 
overhangs the river — the biggest building in 
the town — and an ancient gray convent, not 
quite so large as the mill; and, of course, a 
church. In most of the houses there are tiny 
shops on the lower floors, and upstairs are the 
homes of the people. On the northern side of 
the stream every tillable foot of soil is under 
cultivation. There are flower beds, and plum 
and pear trees in the tiny grass plots alongside 
the more pretentious houses, and the farm lands 
extend to where the town begins. 

This, briefly, is La Buissiere as it looked 
before the war began — a little, drowsy settle- 
ment of dull, frugal, hard-working, kindly 
Belgians, minding their own affairs, prosper- 
ing in their own small way, and having no 
quarrel with the outside world. They lived 
in the only corner of Europe that I know of 
where serving people decline to accept tips for 
rendering small services ; and in a simple, homely 
fashion are, I think, the politest, the most 
[54] 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



courteous, the most accommodating human 
beings on the face of the earth. 

Even their misery did not make them forget 
their manners, as we found when we came 
that way, close behind the conquerors. It was 
only the refugees, fleeing from their homes or 
going back to them again, who were too far 
spent to lift their caps in answer to our hails, 
and too miserably concerned with their own 
ruined affairs, or else too afraid of inquisitive 
strangers, to answer the questions we some- 
times put to them. 

We were three days getting from Brussels to 
La Buissiere — a distance, I suppose, of about 
forty-five English miles. There were no rail- 
roads and no trams for us. The lines were held 
by the Germans or had been destroyed by the 
Allies as they fell back. Nor were there auto- 
mobiles to be had. Such automobiles as were 
not hidden had been confiscated by one side 
or the other. 

Moreover, our journey was a constant suc- 
cession of stops and starts. Now we would be 
delayed for half an hour while some German 
officer examined the passes we carried, he 
meantime eying us with his suspicious squinted 
eyes. Now again we would halt to listen to 
some native's story of battle or reprisal on 
ahead. And always there was the everlasting 
dim reverberation of the distant guns to draw 
us forward. And always, too, there was the 
difficulty of securing means of transportation. 
[551 



PATHS OF GLORY 



It was on Sunday afternoon, August twenty- 
third, when we left Brussels, intending to ride 
to Waterloo. There were six of us, in two 
ancient open carriages designed like gravy 
boats and hauled by gaunt livery horses. 
Though the Germans had held Brussels for 
four days now, life in the suburbs went on 
exactly as it goes on in the suburbs of a Belgian 
city in ordinary times. There was nothing to 
suggest war or a captured city in the family 
parties sitting at small tables before the out- 
lying cafes or strolling decorously under the 
trees that shaded every road. Even the Red 
Cross flags hanging from the windows of many 
of the larger houses seemed for once in keeping 
with the peaceful picture. Of Germans during 
the afternoon we saw almost none. Thick 
enough in the center of the town, the gray 
backs showed themselves hardly at all in the 
environs. 

At the city line a small guard lounged on 
benches before a wine shop. They stood up 
as we drew near, but changed their minds and 
squatted down without challenging us to pro- 
duce the safe-conduct papers that Herr General 
Major Thaddeus von Jarotzky, sitting in due 
state in the ancient Hotel de Ville, had be- 
stowed on us an hour before. 

Just before we reached Waterloo we saw in a 

field on the right, near the road, a small camp 

of German cavalry. The big, round-topped 

yellow tents, sheltering twenty men each and 

[56] 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



looking like huge tortoises, stood in a line. 
From the cook-wagons, modeled on the design 
of those carried by an American circus, came 
the heavy, meaty smells of stews boiling in 
enormous caldrons. The men were lying or 
sitting on straw piles, singing German marching 
songs as they waited for their supper. It was 
always so — whenever and wherever we found 
German troops at rest they were singing, eating 
or drinking — or doing all three at once. A 
German said to me afterwards: 

"Why do we win? Three things are winning 
for us — good marching, good shooting and 
good cooking; but most of all the cooking. 
When our troops stop there is always plenty 
of hot food for them. We never have to fight 
on an empty stomach — we Germans." 

These husky singers were the last Germans 
we were to see for many hours; for between 
the garrison force left behind in Brussels and 
the fast-moving columns hurrying to meet the 
English and the French and a few Belgians — 
on the morrow — a matter of many leagues now 
intervened. 

Evidence of the passing through of the troops 
was plentiful enough though. We saw it in the 
trampled hedges; in the empty beer bottles 
that dotted the roadside ditches — empty bot- 
tles, as we had come to know, meant Germans 
on ahead; in the subdued, furtive attitude of 
the country folk, and, most of all, in the chalked 
legend, in stubby German script — "Gute Leute!" 
[57] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



— on nearly every wine-shop shutter or cottage 
door. Soldiers quartered in such a house over- 
night had on leaving written this line — "Good 
people!" — to indicate the peaceful character of 
the dwellers therein and to commend them to 
the kindness of those who might follow after. 

The Lion of Waterloo, standing on its lofty 
green pyramid, was miles behind us before 
realization came that fighting had started that 
day to the southward of us. We halted at a 
taverne to water the horses, and out came its 
Flemish proprietor, all gesticulations and ex- 
clamations, to tell us that since morning he 
had heard firing on ahead. 

"Ah, sirs," he said, "it was inconceivable — 
that sound of the guns. It went on for hours. 
The whole world must be at war down the 
road!" 

The day before he had seen, flitting across 
the cabbage patches and dodging among the 
elm trees, a skirmish party, mounted, which he 
took to be English; and for two days, so he 
said, the Germans had been passing the tavern 
in numbers uncountable. 

We hurried on then, but as we met many 
peasants, all coming the other way afoot and 
all with excited stories of a supposed battle 
ahead, and as we ourselves now began to catch 
the faint reverberations of cannon fire, our 
drivers manifested a strange reluctance about 
proceeding farther. And when, just at dusk, 
we clattered into the curious little convent- 
[58] 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



church town of Nivelles, and found the tiny 
square before the Black Eagle Inn full of 
refugees who had trudged in from towns be- 
yond, the liverymen, after taking off their var- 
nished high hats to scratch their preplexed 
heads, announced that Brussels was where they 
belonged and to Brussels they would return 
that night, though their spent horses dropped 
in the traces on the way. 

We supped that night at the Black Eagle; — 
slept there too — and it was at supper we had as 
guests Raymond Putzeys, aged twelve, and 
Alfred, his father. Except crumbs of chocolate 
and pieces of dry bread, neither of them had 
eaten for two days. 

The boy, who was a round-faced, handsome, 
dirty, polite little chap, said not a word except 
"Merci!" He was too busy clearing his plate 
clean as fast as we loaded it with ham and 
eggs and plum jam; and when he had eaten 
enough for three and could hold no more he 
went to sleep, with his tousled head among 
the dishes. 

The father between bites told us his tale — 
such a tale as we had heard dozens of times 
already and were to hear again a hundred 
times before that crowded week ended — he 
telling it with rolling eyes and lifting brows, 
and graphic and abundant gestures. Behind 
him and us, penning our table about with a 
living hedge, stood the leading burghers of 
Nivelles, now listening to him, now watching 
[59] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



us with curious eyes. And, as he talked on, 
the landlord dimmed the oil lamps and made 
fast the door; for this town, being in German 
hands, was under martial law and must lock 
and bar itself in at eight o'clock each night. 
So we sat in a half light and listened. 

They lived, the two Putzeys, at a hamlet 
named Marchienne-au-Pont, to the southward. 
The Germans had come into it the day before 
at sunup, and finding the French there had 
opened fire. From the houses the French had 
replied until driven out by heavy odds, and then 
they ran across the fields, leaving many dead 
and wounded behind them. As for the in- 
habitants they had, during the fighting, hidden 
in their cellars. 

"When the French were gone the Germans 
drove us out," went on the narrator; "and, of 
the men, they made several of us march ahead 
of them down the road into the next village, 
we holding up our hands and loudly begging 
those within the houses not to fire, for fear of 
killing us who were their friends and neighbors. 
When this town surrendered the Germans let 
us go, .but first one of them gave me a cake of 
chocolate. 

"Yet when I tried to go to aid a wounded 
Frenchman who lay in the fields, another Ger- 
man, I thought, fired at me. I heard the bullet 
— it buzzed like a hornet. So then I ran away 
and found my son here; and we came across 
the country, following the canals and avoiding 
[60] 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



the roads, which were filled with German 
troops. When we had gone a mile we looked 
back and there was much thick smoke behind us 
— our houses were burning, I suppose. So last 
night we slept in the woods and all day we 
walked, and to-night reached here, bringing 
with us nothing except the clothes on our backs. 

"I have no wife — she has been dead for two 
years — but in Brussels I have two daughters at 
school. Do you think I shall be permitted to 
enter Brussels and seek for my two daughters? 
This morning they told me Brussels was burn- 
ing; but that I do not believe." 

Then, also, he told us in quick, eager sen- 
tences, lowering his voice while he spoke, that 
a priest, with his hands tied behind his back, 
had been driven through a certain .village ahead 
of the Germans, as a human shield for them; 
and that, in still another village, two aged 
women had been violated and murdered. Had 
he beheld these things with his own eyes? 
No; he had been told of them. 

Here I might add that this was our com- 
monest experience in questioning the refugees. 
Every one of them had a tale to tell of German 
atrocities on noncombatants; but not once did 
we find an avowed eye-witness to such things. 
Always our informant had heard of the tor- 
turing or the maiming or the murdering, but 
never had he personally seen it. It had always 
happened in another town — never in his own 
town. 

[61] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



We hoped to hire fresh vehicles of some sort 
in Nivelles. Indeed, a half -drunken burgher 
who spoke fair English, and who, because he 
had once lived in America, insisted on taking 
personal charge of our affairs, was constantly 
bustling in to say he had arranged for carriages 
and horses; but when the starting hour came — 
at five o'clock on Monday morning — there was 
no sign either of our fuddled guardian or of 
the rigs he had promised. So we set out 
afoot, following the everlasting sound of the 
guns. 

After having many small adventures on the 
way we came at nightfall to Binche, a town 
given over to dullness and lacemaking, and 
once a year to a masked carnival, but which 
now was jammed with German supply trains, 
and by token of this latter circumstance filled 
with apprehensive townspeople. But there had 
been no show of resistance here, and no houses 
had been burned; and the Germans were paying 
freely for what they took and treating the 
townspeople civilly. 

Indeed, all that day we had traveled through 
a district as yet unharried and unmolested. 
Though sundry hundreds of thousands of Ger- 
mans had gone that way, no burnt houses or 
squandered fields marked their wake; and the 
few peasants who had not run away at the 
approach of the dreaded Allemands were back 
at work, trying to gather their crops in barrows 
or on their backs, since they had no work-cattle 
[621 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



left. For these the Germans had taken from 
them, to the last fit horse and the last colt. 

At Binche we laid up two nights and a day 
for the curing of our blistered feet. Also, here 
we bought our two flimsy bicycles and our 
decrepit dogcart, and our still more decrepit 
mare to haul it; and, with this equipment, on 
Wednesday morning, bright and early, we made 
a fresh start, heading now toward Maubeuge, 
across the French boundary. 

Current rumor among the soldiers at Binche 
— for the natives, seemingly through fear for 
their own skins, would tell us nothing — was 
that at Maubeuge the onward-pressing Ger- 
mans had caught up with the withdrawing col- 
umns of the Allies and were trying to bottle 
the stubborn English rear guard. For once the 
gossip of the privates and the noncommissioned 
officers proved to be true. There was fighting 
that day near Maubeuge — hard fighting and 
plenty of it; but, though we got within five 
miles of it, and heard the guns and saw the 
smoke from them, we were destined not to get 
there. 

Strung out, with the bicycles in front, we 
went down the straight white road that ran 
toward the frontier. After an hour or two of 
steady going we began to notice signs of the 
retreat that had trailed through this section 
forty-eight hours before. We picked up a 
torn shoulder strap, evidently of French work- 
manship, which had 13 embroidered on it in 
[631 



PATHS OF GLORY 



faded red tape; and we found, behind the trunk 
of a tree, a knapsack, new but empty, which 
was too light to have been part of a German 
soldier's equipment. 

We thought it was French; but now I think 
it must have been Belgian, because, as we sub- 
sequently discovered, a few scattering detach- 
ments of the Belgian foot soldiers who fled 
from Brussels on the eve of the occupation — 
disappearing so completely and so magically — 
made their way westward and southward to 
the French lines, toward Mons, and enrolled 
with the Allies in the last desperate effort to 
dam off and stem back the German torrent. 

Also, in a hedge, was a pair of new shoes, 
with their mouths gaping open and their 
latchets hanging down like tongues, as though 
hungering for feet to go into them. But not a 
shred or scrap of German belongings — barring 
only the empty bottles — did we see. 

The marvelous German system, which is 
made up of a million small things to form one 
great, complete thing, ordained that never, 
either when marching or after camping, or even 
after fighting, should any object, however 
worthless, be discarded, lest it give to hostile 
eyes some hint as to the name of the command 
or the extent of its size. These Germans we 
were trailing cleaned up behind themselves as 
carefully as New England housewives. 

It may have been the German love of order 
and regularity that induced them even to avoid 
[64] 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



trampling the ripe grain in the fields wherever 
possible. Certainly, except when dealing out 
punishment, they did remarkably little dam- 
age, considering their numbers, along their line 
of march through this lowermost strip of Bel- 
gium. 

At Merbes-Ste.-Marie, a matter of six kilo- 
meters from Binche, we came on the first proof 
of seeming wantonness we encountered that 
day. An old woman sat in a doorway of what 
had been a wayside wine shop, guarding the 
pitiable ruin of her stock and fixtures. All about 
her on the floor was a litter of foul straw, mud- 
died by many feet and stained with spilled 
drink. The stench from a bloated dead cavalry 
horse across the road poisoned the air. The 
woman said a party of private soldiers, straying 
back from the main column, had despoiled her, 
taking what they pleased of her goods and in 
pure vandalism destroying what they could not 
use. 

Her shop was ruined, she said. With a ges- 
ture of both arms, as though casting something 
from her, she expressed how utter and complete 
was her ruin. Also she was hungry — she and 
her children — for the Germans had eaten all 
the food in the house and all the food in the 
houses of her neighbors. We could not feed her, 
for we had no stock of provisions with us; but 
We gave her a five-franc piece and left her 
calling down the blessings of the saints on us 
in French-Flemish. 

[65] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



The sister village of Merbes-le-Chateau, an- 
other kilometer farther on, revealed to us all its 
doors and many of its windows caved in by 
blows of gun butts and, at the nearer end of the 
principal street, five houses in smoking ruins. 
A group of men and women were pawing about 
in the wreckage, seeking salvage. They had 
saved a half-charred washstand, a scorched 
mattress, a clock and a few articles of women's 
wear; and these they had piled in a mound on 
the edge of the road. 

At first, not knowing who we were, they stood 
mute, replying to questions only with shrugged 
shoulders and lifted eyebrows; but when we 
made them realize that we were Americans they 
changed. All were ready enough to talk then; 
they crowded about us, gesticulating and inter- 
rupting one another. From the babble we 
gathered that the German skirmishers, coming 
in the strength of one company, had found an 
English cavalry squad in the town. The Eng- 
lish had swapped a few volleys with them, then 
had fallen back toward the river in good order 
and without loss. 

The Germans, pushing in, had burned certain 
outlying houses from which shots had come 
and burst open the rest. Also they had re- 
peated the trick of capturing sundry luckless 
natives and, in their rush through the town, 
driving these prisoners ahead of them as living 
bucklers to minimize the danger of being shot 
at from the windows. 

[661 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



One youth showed us a raw wound in his 
ear. A piece of tile, splintered by an errant 
bullet, had pierced it, he said, as the Germans 
drove him before them. Another man told us 
his father — and the father must have been an 
old man, for the speaker himself was in his 
fifties — had been shot through the thigh. But 
had anybody been killed? That was what we 
wanted to know. Ah, but yes! A dozen eager 
fingers pointed to the house immediately behind 
us. There a man had been killed. 

Coming back to try to save some of their 
belongings after the Germans had gone through, 
these others had found him at the head of the 
cellar steps in his blazing house. His throat 
had been cut and his blood was on the floor, 
and he was dead. They led us into the shell 
of the place, the stone walls being still stanchly 
erect; but the roof was gone, and in the cinders 
and dust on the planks of an inner room they 
showed us a big dull-brown smear. 

This, they told us, pointing, was the place 
where he lay. One man in pantomime acted 
out the drama of the discovery of the body. 
He was a born actor, that Belgian villager, and 
an orator — with his hands. Somehow, watching 
him, I visualized the victim as a little man, old 
and stoop-shouldered and feeble in his move- 
ments. 

I looked about the room. The corner toward 
the road was a black ruin, but the back wall 
was hardly touched by the marks of the fire. 
[67] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



On a mantel small bits of pottery stood intact, 
and a holy picture on the wall — a cheap print 
of a saint — was not even singed. At the foot 
of the cellar steps curdled milk stood in pans; 
and beside the milk, on a table, was a half- 
moon of cheese and a long knife. 

We wanted to know why the man who lived 
here had been killed. They professed igno- 
rance then — none of them knew, or, at least, 
none of them would say. A little later a woman 
told us she had heard the Germans caught him 
watching from a window with a pair of opera 
glasses, and on this evidence took him for a 
spy. But we could secure no direct evidence 
either to confirm the tale or to disprove it. 

We got to the center of the town, leaving 
the venerable nag behind to be baited at a big 
gray barn by a big, shapeless, kindly woman 
hostler whose wooden shoes clattered on the 
round cobbles of her stable yard like drum taps. 

In the Square, after many citizens had in- 
formed us there was nothing to eat, a little 
Frenchwoman took pity on our emptiness, and, 
leading us to a parlor behind a shop where she 
sold, among other things, post cards, cheeses 
and underwear, she made us a huge omelet 
and gave us also good butter and fresh milk 
and a pot of her homemade marmalade. Her 
two little daughters, who looked as though 
they had escaped from a Frans Hals canvas, 
waited on us while we wolfed the food down. 

Quite casually our hostess showed us a round 
[68] 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



hole in the window behind us, a big white scar 
in the wooden inner shutter and a flattened 
chunk of lead. The night before, it seemed, 
some one, for purposes unknown, had fired a 
bullet through the window of her house. It 
was proof of the rapidity with which the actual 
presence of war works indifference to sudden 
shocks among a people that this woman could 
discuss the incident quietly. Hostile gun butts 
had splintered her front door; why not a stray 
bullet or two through her back window? So 
we interpreted her attitude. 

It was she who advised us not to try to ford 
the Sambre at Merbes-le-Chateau, but to go 
off at an angle to La Buissiere, where she had 
heard one bridge still stood. She said nothing 
of a fight at that place. It is possible that she 
knew nothing of it, though the two towns almost 
touched. Indeed, in all these Belgian towns 
we found the people so concerned with their 
own small upheavals and terrors that they 
seemed not to care or even to know how their 
neighbors a mile or two miles away had fared. 

Following this advice we swung about and 
drove to La Buissiere to find the bridge that 
might still be intact; and, finding it, we found 
also, and quite by chance, the scene of the first 
extended engagement on which we stumbled. 

Our first intimation of it was the presence, 

in a cabbage field beyond the town, of three 

strangely subdued peasants softening the hard 

earth with water, so that they might dig a 

[691 



PATHS OF GLORY 



grave for a dead horse, which, after lying two 
days in the hot sun, had already become a 
nuisance and might become a pestilence. When 
we told them we meant to enter La Buissiere 
they held up their soiled hands in protest. 

"There has been much fighting there," one 
said, "and many are dead, and more are dying. 
Also, the shooting still goes on; but what it 
means we do not know, because we dare not 
venture into the streets, which are full of Ger- 
mans. Hark, m'sieurs!" 

Even as he spoke we heard a rifle crack; and 
then, after a pause, a second report. We went 
forward cautiously across a bridge that spanned 
an arm of the canal, and past a double line of 
houses, with broken windows, from which no 
sign or sound of life came. Suddenly at a turn 
three German privates of a lancer regiment 
faced us. They were burdened with bottles of 
beer, and one carried his lance, which he flung 
playfully in our path. He had been drinking 
and was jovially exhilarated. As soon as he 
saw the small silk American flag that fluttered 
from the rail of our dogcart he and his friends 
became enthusiastic in their greetings, offering 
us beer and wanting to know whether the 
Americans meant to declare for Germany now 
that the Japanese had sided with England. 

Leaving them cheering for the Americans we 
negotiated another elbow in the twisting street 
— and there all about us was the aftermath 
and wreckage of a spirited fight. 
[70] 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



Earlier in this chapter I told — or tried to 
tell — how La Buissiere must have looked in 
peaceful times. I shall try now to tell how it 
actually looked that afternoon we rode into it. 

In the center of the town the main street 
opens out to form an irregular circle, and the 
houses fronting it make a compact ring. 
Through a gap one gets a glimpse of the little 
river which one has just crossed; and on the 
river bank stands the mill, or what is left of 
it, and that is little enough. Its roof is gone, 
shot clear away in a shower of shattered 
tiling, and its walls are breached in a hundred 
places. It is pretty certain that mill will never 
grind grist again. 

On its upper floor, which is now a sieve, the 
Germans — so they themselves told us — found, 
after the fighting, the seventy-year-old miller, 
dead, with a gun in his hands and a hole in his 
head. He had elected to help the French de- 
fend the place; and it was as well for him that 
he fell fighting, because, had he been taken 
alive, the Prussians, following their grim rule 
for all civilians caught with weapons, would 
have stood him up against a wall with a firing 
squad before him. 

The houses round about have fared better, 
in the main, than the mill, though none of 
them has come scatheless out of the fight. 
Hardly a windowpane is whole; hardly a wall 
but is pocked by bullets or rent by larger mis- 
siles. Some houses have lost roofs; some have 
[71] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



lost side walls, so that one can gaze straight 
into them and see the cluttered furnishings, 
half buried in shattered masonry and crumbled 
plaster. 

One small cottage has been blown clear away 
in a blast of artillery fire; only the chimney 
remains, pointing upward like a stubby finger. 
A fireplace, with a fire in it, is the glowing heart 
of a house; and a chimney completes it and 
reveals that it is a home fit for human creatures 
to live in; but we see here — and the truth of it 
strikes us as it never did before — that a chimney 
standing alone typifies desolation and ruin 
more fitly, more brutally, than any written 
words could typify it. 

Everywhere there are soldiers — German sol- 
diers — in their soiled, dusty gray service uni- 
forms, always in heavy boots; always with 
their tunics buttoned to the throat. Some, off 
duty, are lounging at ease in the doors of the 
houses. More, on duty, are moving about 
briskly in squads, with fixed bayonets. One is 
learning to ride a bicycle, and when he falls 
off, as he does repeatedly, his comrades laugh 
at him and shout derisive advice at him. 

There are not many of the townsfolk in sight. 
Experience has taught us that in any town 
not occupied by the enemy our appearance 
will be the signal for an immediate gathering 
of the citizens, all flocking about us, filled 
with a naive, respectful inquisitiveness, and 
wanting to know where we have come from and 
[72] 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



to what place we are going. Here in this 
stricken town not a single villager comes near 
us. A priest passes us, bows deeply to us, and 
in an instant is gone round a jog in the street, 
the skirts of his black robe flicking behind him. 
From upper windows faces peer out at us — 
faces of women and children mostly. In nearly 
every one of these faces a sort of cow-like bewil- 
derment expresses itself — not grief, not even 
resentment, but merely a stupefied wonderment 
at the astounding fact that their town, rather 
than some other town, should be thef town 
where the soldiers of other nations come to 
fight out their feud. We have come to know 
well that look these last few days. So far as 
we have seen there has been no mistreatment 
of civilians by the soldiers; yet we note that 
the villagers stay inside the shelter of their 
damaged homes as though they felt safer there. 

A young officer bustles up, spick and span 
in his tan boots and tan gloves, and, finding 
us to be Americans and correspondents, be- 
comes instantly effusive. He has just come 
through his first fight, seemingly with some 
credit to himself; and he is proud of the part 
he has played and is pleased to talk about it. 
Of his own accord he volunteers to lead us to 
the heights back of the town where the French 
defenses were and where the hand-to-hand 
fighting took place. 

As we trail along behind him in single file 
we pass a small paved court before a stable 
[73] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



and see a squad of French prisoners. Later 
we are to see several thousand French prisoners ; 
but now the sight is at once a sensation and a 
novelty to us. These are all French prisoners; 
there are no Belgians or Englishmen among 
them. In their long, cumbersome blue coats 
and baggy red pants they are huddled down 
against a wall in a heap of straw. They lie 
there silently, chewing straws and looking very 
forlorn. Four German soldiers with fixed 
bayonets are guarding them. 

The young lieutenant leads us along a steeply 
ascending road over a ridge and then stops; 
and as we look about us the consciousness 
strikes home to us, with almost the jar of a 
physical blow, that we are standing where men 
have lately striven together and have fallen 
and died. 

In front of us and below us is the town, with 
the river winding into it at the east and out 
of it at the west; and beyond the town, to the 
north, is the cup-shaped valley of fair, fat 
farm lands, all heavy and pregnant with un- 
garnered, ungathered crops. Behind us, on 
the front of the hill, is a hedge, and beyond the 
hedge — just a foot or so back of it, in fact — 
is a deep trench, plainly dug out by hand, and 
so lately done that the cut clods are still moist 
and fresh-looking. At the first instant of look- 
ing it seems to us that this intrenchment is 
full of dead men; but when we look closer we 
see that what we take for corpses are the scat- 
(741 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



tered garments and equipments of French in- 
fantrymen — long blue coats ; peaked, red-topped 
caps; spare shirts; rifled knapsacks; water- 
bottles; broken guns; side arms; bayonet belts 
and blanket rolls. There are perhaps twenty 
guns in sight. Each one has been rendered 
useless by being struck against the earth with 
sufficient force to snap the stock at the grip. 

Almost at my feet is a knapsack, ripped open 
and revealing a card of small china buttons, a 
new red handkerchief, a gray-striped flannel 
shirt, a pencil and a sheaf of writing paper. 
Rummaging in the main compartment I find, 
folded at the back, a book recording the name 
and record of military service of one Gaston 
Michel Miseroux, whose home is at Amiens, 
and who is — or was — a private in the Tenth 

Battalion of the Regiment of Chasseurs a 

Pied. Whether this Gaston Michel Miseroux 
got away alive without his knapsack, or whether 
he was captured or was killed, there is none 
to say. His service record is here in the 
trampled dust and he is gone. 

Before going farther the young lieutenant, 
speaking in his broken English, told us the 
story of the fight, which had been fought, he 
said, just forty-eight hours before. "The 
French," he said, "must have been here for 
several days. They had fortified this hill, as 
you see; digging intrenchments in front for 
their riflemen and putting their artillery behind 
at a place I shall presently show you. Also 
[75] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



they had placed many of their sharpshooters 
in the houses. It was a strong position, com- 
manding the passage of the river, and they 
should have been able to hold it against twice 
their number. 

"Our men came, as you did, along that road 
off yonder; and then our infantry advanced 
across the fields under cover of our artillery 
fire. We were in the open and the French 
were above us here and behind shelter; and so 
we lost many men. 

"They had mined the bridge over the canal 
and also the last remaining bridge across the 
river; but we came so fast that we took both 
bridges before they could set off the mines. 

"In twenty minutes we held the town and 
the last of their sharpshooters in the houses had 
been dislodged or killed. Then, while our guns 
moved over there to the left and shelled them 
on the flank, two companies of Germans — 
five hundred men — charged up the steep road 
over which you have just climbed and took 
this trench here in five minutes of close fighting. 

"The enemy lost many men here before they 
ran. So did we lose many. On that spot 
there" — he pointed to a little gap in the hedge, 
not twenty feet away, where the grass was 
pressed flat — "I saw three dead men lying in a 
heap. 

"We pushed the French back, taking a few 
prisoners as we went, until on the other side 
of this hill our artillery began to rake them, 
[76] 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



and then they gave way altogether and re- 
treated to the south, taking their guns. Re- 
member, they outnumbered us and they had 
the advantage of position; but we whipped 
them — we Germans — as we always do whip our 
enemies. 

His voice changed from boasting to pity: 

"Ach, but it was shameful that they should 
have been sent against us wearing those long 
blue coats, those red trousers, those shiny black 
belts and bright brass buttons! At a mile, 
or even half a mile, the Germans in their dark- 
gray uniforms, with dull facings, fade into the 
background; but a Frenchman in his foolish 
monkey clothes is a target for as far as you 
can see him. 

"And their equipment — see how flimsy it is 
when compared with ours! And their guns — 
so inferior, so old-fashioned alongside the Ger- 
man guns! I tell you this: Forty-four years 
they have been wishing to fight us for what we 
did in 1870; and when the time comes they are 
not ready and we are ready. While they have 
been singing their Marseillaise Hymn, we have 
been thinking. While they have been talking, 
we have been working." 

Next he escorted us back along the small 
plateau that extended south from the face of 
the bluff. We made our way through a con- 
stantly growing confusion of abandoned equip- 
ment and garments — all the flotsam and jetsam 
of a rout. I suppose we saw as many as fifty 
[771 



PATHS OF GLORY 



smashed French rifles, as many as a hundred 
and fifty canteens and knapsacks. 

Crossing a sunken road, where trenches for 
riflemen to kneel in and fire from had been dug 
in the sides of the bank — a road our guide 
said was full of dead men after the fight — we 
came very soon to the site of the French camp. 
Here, from the medley and mixture of an in- 
describable jumble of wreckage, certain ob- 
jects stand out, as I write this, detached and 
plain in my mind; such things, for example, as 
a straw basket of twelve champagne bottles 
with two bottles full and ten empty; a box of 
lump sugar, broken open, with a stain of spilled 
red wine on some of the white cubes; a roll of 
new mattresses jammed into a natural recep- 
tacle at the root of an oak tree; a saber hilt of 
shining brass with the blade missing; a whole 
set of pewter knives and forks sown broadcast 
on the bruised and trampled grass. But there 
was no German relic in the lot — you may be 
sure of that. Farther down, where the sunken 
road again wound across our path, we passed 
an old-fashioned family carriage jammed against 
the bank, with one shaft snapped off short. 
Lying on the dusty seat-cushion was a single 
silver teaspoon. 

Almost opposite the carriage, against the 
other bank, was a cavalryman's boot; it had 
been cut from a wounded limb. The leather 
had been split all the way down the leg from 
the top to the ankle, and the inside of the boot 
[781 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



was full of clotted, dried blood. And just as 
we turned back to return to the town I saw a 
child's stuffed cloth doll — rag dolls I think 
they call them in the States — lying flat in the 
road; and a wagon wheel or a cannon wheel had 
passed over the head, squashing it flat. 

I am not striving for effect when I tell of 
this trifle. When you write of such things as 
a battlefield you do not need to strive for 
effect. The effects are all there, ready-made, 
waiting to be set down. Nor do I know how 
a child's doll came to be in that harried, up- 
torn place. I only know it was there, and being 
there it seemed to me to sum up the fate of 
little Belgium in this great war. If I had been 
seeking a visible symbol of Belgium's case I 
do not believe I could have found a more fit- 
ting one anywhere. 

Going down the hill to the town we met, 
skirting across our path, a party of natives 
wearing Red Cross distinguishments. The 
lieutenant said these men had undoubtedly 
been beating the woods and grain fields for 
the scattered wounded or dead. He added, 
without emotion, that from time to time they 
found one such; in fact, the volunteer searchers 
had brought in two Frenchmen just before we 
arrived — one to be cared for at the hospital, 
the other to be buried. 

We had thanked the young lieutenant and 
had bade him good-by, and were starting off 
again, hoping to make Maubeuge before night, 
[79] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



when suddenly it struck me that the one 
thing about La Buissiere I should recall 
most vividly was not the sight of it, all stricken 
and stunned and forlorn as it was, but the 
stench of it. 

Before this my eyes had been so busy re- 
cording impressions that my nose had neglected 
its duty; now for the first time I sensed the 
vile reek that arose from all about me. The 
place was one big, horrid stink. It smelled 
of ether and iodoform and carbolic acid — 
there being any number of improvised hospitals, 
full of wounded, in sight; it smelled of sour beef 
bones and stale bread and moldy hay and 
fresh horse dung; it smelled of the sweaty 
bodies of the soldiers; it smelled of everything 
that is fetid and rancid and unsavory and un- 
wholesome. 

And yet, forty-eight hours before, this town, 
if it was like every other Belgian town, must 
have been as clean as clean could be. When 
the Belgian peasant housewife has cleaned the 
inside of her house she issues forth with bucket 
and scrubbing brush and washes the outside 
of it — and even the pavement in front and the 
cobbles of the road. But the war had come to 
La Buissiere and turned it upside down. 

A war wastes towns, it seems, even more 
visibly than it wastes nations. Already the 
streets were ankle-deep in filth. There were 
broken lamps and broken bottles and broken 
windowpanes everywhere, and one could not 
[80] 



SHERMAN SAID IT 



step without an accompaniment of crunching 
glass from underfoot. 

Sacks of provender, which the French had 
abandoned, were split open and their contents 
wasted in the mire while the inhabitants went 
hungry. The lower floors of the houses were 
bedded in straw where the soldiers had slept, 
and the straw was thickly covered with dried 
mud and already gave off a sour-sickish odor. 
Over everything was the lime dust from the 
powdered walls and plastering. 

We drove away, then, over the hill toward 
the south. From the crest of the bluff we could 
look . down on ruined La Buissiere, with its 
garrison of victorious invaders, its frightened 
townspeople, and its houses full of maimed and 
crippled soldiers of both sides. 

Beyond we could see the fields, where the 
crops, already overripe, must surely waste 
for lack of men and teams to harvest them; 
and on the edge of one field we marked where 
the three peasants dug the grave for the rotting 
horse, striving to get it underground before 
it set up a plague. 

Except for them, busy with pick and spade, 
no living creature in sight was at work. 

Sherman said it! 



[81] 



CHAPTER IV 

MARSCH, MARSCH, MARSCH, SO 
GEH'N WIR WEITER!" 



HAVE you ever seen three hundred thou- 
sand men and one hundred thousand 
horses moving in one compact, mar- 
velous unit of organization, discipline 
and system? If you have not seen it you can- 
not imagine what it is like. If you have seen 
it you cannot tell what it is like. In one case 
the conceptive faculty fails you; in the other 
the descriptive. I, who have seen this sight, 
am not foolish enough to undertake to put it 
down with pencil on paper. I think I know 
something of the limitations of the written 
English language. What I do mean to try to 
do in this chapter is to record some of my 
impressions as I watched it. 

In beginning this job I find myself casting 
about for comparisons to set up against the 
vision of a full German army of seven army 
corps on the march. I think of the tales I 
have read and the stories I have heard of other 
[821 



"MARSCH, MARSCH, MARSCH" 

great armies: Alaric's war bands and Attila's; 
the First Crusade; Hannibal's cohorts, and 
Alexander's host, and Caesar's legions; the 
Goths and the Vandals; the million of Xerxes 
— if it was a million — and Napoleon starting 
for Moscow. 

It is of no use. This Germanic horde, which 
I saw pouring down across Belgium, bound for 
France, does not in retrospect seem to me a 
man-made, man-managed thing. It seems more 
like a great, orderly function of Nature; as or- 
dained and cosmic as the tides of the sea or 
the sweep of a mighty wind. It is hard to be- 
lieve that it was ever fashioned of thousands 
of separate atoms, so perfectly is it welded 
into a whole. It is harder still to accept it 
as a mutable and a mortal organism, subject 
to the shifts of chance and mischance. 

And then, on top of this, when one stops to 
remember that this army of three hundred 
thousand men and a hundred thousand horses 
was merely one single cog of the German mili- 
tary machine; that if all the German war 
strength were assembled together you might 
add this army to the greater army and hardly 
know it was there — why, then, the brain re- 
fuses to wrestle with a computation so gigantic. 
The imagination just naturally bogs down and 
quits. 

I have already set forth in some detail how 
it came to pass that we went forth from Brus- 
sels in a taxicab looking for the war; and how 
[83] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



in the outskirts of Louvain we found it, and 
very shortly thereafter also found that we 
were cut off from our return and incidentally 
had lost not only our chauffeur and our taxi- 
cab but our overcoats as well. There being 
nothing else to do we made ourselves comfort- 
able along side the Belgian Lion Cafe in the 
southern edge of Louvain, and for hours we 
watched the advance guard sliding down the 
road through a fog of white dust. 

Each time a break came in the weaving gray 
lines we fancied this surely was all. All? 
What we saw there was a puny dribbling 
stream compared with the torrent that was 
coming. The crest of that living tidal wave 
was still two days and many miles to the rear- 
ward. We had seen the head and a little of 
the neck. The swollen body of the myriad- 
legged gray centipede was as yet far behind. 

As we sat in chairs tilted against the wall 
and watched, we witnessed an interesting little 
side play. At the first coming of the German 
skirmishers the people of this quarter of the 
town had seemed stupefied with amazement 
and astonishment. Most of them, it subse- 
quently developed, had believed right up to 
the last minute that the forts of Liege still 
held out and that the Germans had not yet 
passed the gateways of their country, many 
kilometers to the eastward. When the scouts 
of the enemy appeared in their streets they fell 
for the moment into a stunned state. A little 
[84] 



"MARSCH, MARSCH, MARSCH" 

later the appearance of a troop of Uhlans had 
revived their resentment. We had heard that 
quick hiss and snarl of hatred which sprang 
from them as the lancers trotted into view 
on their superb mounts out of the mouth of a 
neighboring lane, and had seen how instan- 
taneously the dull, malignant gleam of gun 
metal, as a sergeant pulled his pistol on them, 
had brought the silence of frightened respect 
again. 

It now appeared that realization of the num- 
ber of the invaders was breeding in the Bel- 
gians a placating spirit. If a soldier fell out 
of line at the door of a house to ask for water, 
all within that house strove to bring the water 
to him. If an officer, returning from a small 
sortie into other streets, checked up to ask the 
way to rejoin his command, a dozen eager 
arms waved in chorus to point out the 
proper direction, and a babble of solicitous 
voices arose from the group about his halted 
horse. 

Young Belgian girls began smiling at soldiers 
swinging by and the soldiers grinned back and 
waved their arms. You might almost have 
thought the troops were Allies passing through 
a friendly community. This phase of the plastic 
Flemish temperament made us marvel. When 
I was told, a fortnight afterward, how these 
same people rose in the night to strike at these 
their enemies, and how, so doing, they brought 
about the ruination of their city and the sum- 
[85] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



mary executions of some hundreds of them- 
selves, I marveled all the more. 

Presently, as we sat there, we heard — above 
the rumbling of cannon wheels, the nimble 
clunking of hurrying hoofs and the heavy 
thudding of booted feet, falling and rising all 
in unison — a new note from overhead, a com- 
bination of whir and flutter and whine. We 
looked aloft. Directly above the troops, flying 
as straight for Brussels as a homing bee for 
the hive, went a military monoplane, serving 
as courier and spy for the crawling columns 
below it. Directly, having gone far ahead, it 
came speeding back, along a lower air lane and 
performed a series of circling and darting 
gyrations, which doubtlessly had a signal-code 
meaning for the troops. Twice or three times 
it swung directly above our heads, and at the 
height at which it now evoluted we could 
plainly distinguish the downward curve of its 
wing-planes and the peculiar droop of the 
rudder — both things that marked it for an 
army model. We could also make out the 
black cross painted on its belly as a further 
distinguishing mark. 

To me a monoplane always suggests a bird 
when it does not suggest an insect or a winged 
reptile; and this monoplane particularly sug- 
gested the bird type. The simile which oc- 
curred to me was that of the bird which guards 
the African rhinoceros; after that it was doubly 
easy to conceive of this army as a rhinoceros, 
[86] 



"MARSCH, MARSCH, MARSCH" 

having all the brute strength and brute force 
which are a part of that creature, and its well- 
armored sides and massive legs and deadly 
horned head; and finally its peculiar fancy for 
charging straight at its objective target, tramp- 
ling down all obstacles in the way. 

The Germans also fancy their monoplane as 
a bird; but they call it Taube — a dove. To think 
of calling this sinister adjunct of warfare a 
dove, which among modern peoples has always 
symbolized peace, seemed a most terrible bit 
of sarcasm. As an exquisite essence of irony I 
saw but one thing during our week-end in 
Louvain to match it, and that was a big van 
requisitioned from a Cologne florist's shop to 
use in a baggage train. It bore on its sides 
advertisements of potted plants and floral 
pieces — and it was loaded to its top with spare 
ammunition. 

Yet, on second thought, I do not believe 
the Prussians call their war monoplane a dove 
by way of satire. The Prussians are a serious- 
minded race and never more serious than when 
they make war, as all the world now knows. 

Three monoplanes buzzed over us, making 
sawmill sounds, during the next hour or two. 
Thereafter, whenever we saw German troops 
on the march through a country new to them 
we looked aloft for the thing with the droopy 
wings and the black cross on its yellow abdo- 
men. Sooner or later it appeared, coming 
always out of nowhere and vanishing always 
[87] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



into space. We were never disappointed. It 
is only the man who expects the German army 
to forget something needful or necessary who 
is disappointed. 

It was late in the afternoon when we bade 
farewell to the three-hundred-pound proprie- 
tress of the Belgian Lion and sought to reach 
the center of the town through byways not 
yet blocked off by the marching regiments. 
When we were perhaps halfway to our desti- 
nation we met a town bellman and a town 
crier, the latter being in the uniform of a 
Garde Civique. The bellringer would ply his 
clapper until he drew a crowd, and then the 
Garde Civique would halt in an open space at 
the junction of two or more streets and read a 
proclamation from the burgomaster calling on 
all the inhabitants to preserve their tranquillity 
and refrain from overt acts against the Germans, 
under promise of safety if they obeyed and 
threat of death at the hands of the Germans 
if they disregarded the warning. 

This word-of -mouth method of spreading an 
order applied only to the outlying sections. 
In the more thickly settled districts, where 
presumably the populace could read and 
write, proclamations posted on wall and window 
took its place. During the three days we 
stayed in Louvain one proclamation succeeded 
another with almost the frequency of special 
extras of evening newspapers when a big news 
story breaks in an American city: 
[88] 



"MARSCH, MARSCH, MARSCH" 

The citizens were to surrender all firearms 
in their possession; it would be immediately 
fatal to him if a man were caught with a lethal 
weapon on his person or in his house. Trades- 
people might charge this or that price for the 
necessities of life, and no more. All persons, 
except physicians and nurses in the discharge 
of their professional duties, and gendarmes — 
the latter being now disarmed and entirely 
subservient to the military authorities — must 
be off the streets and public squares at a given 
time — to wit, nine p. m. Cafes must close at 
the same hour. Any soldier who refused to 
pay for any private purchase should be imme- 
diately reported at headquarters for punish- 
ment. Upper front windows of all houses on 
certain specified streets must be closed and 
locked after nightfall, remaining so until day- 
light of the following morning; this notice 
being followed and overlapped very shortly 
by one more amplifying, which prescribed that 
not only must front windows be made fast, 
but all must have lights behind them and the 
street doors must be left unlocked. 

The portent of this was simple enough: If 
any man sought to fire on the soldiers below 
he must first unfasten a window and expose 
himself in the light; and after he fired admit- 
tance would be made easy for those who came 
searching for him to kill him. 

At first these placards were signed by the 
burgomaster, with the military commandant's 
[89] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



indorsement, and sometimes by both those 
functionaries; but on the second day there 
appeared one signed by the commandant only; 
and this one, for special emphasis, was bounded 
by wide borders printed in bright red. It 
stated, with cruel brevity, that the burgo- 
master, the senator for the district and the 
leading magistrate had been taken into custody 
as hostages for the good conduct of their con- 
stituents; and that if a civilian made any at- 
tack against the Germans he would forfeit 
his own life and endanger the lives of the three 
prisoners. Thus, inch by inch, the conquerors, 
sensing a growing spirit of revolt among the 
conquered — a spirit as yet nowise visible on 
the surface — took typically German steps to 
hold the rebellious people of Louvain in hobbles. 
It was when we reached the Y-shaped 
square in the middle of things, with the splen- 
did old Gothic town hall rising on one side of 
it and the famous Church of Saint Pierre at 
the bottom of the gore, that we first beheld at 
close hand the army of the War Lord. Along- 
side the Belgian Lion we had thought it best 
to keep our distance from the troops as they 
passed obliquely across our line of vision. 
Here we might press as closely as we pleased 
to the column. The magnificent precision 
with which the whole machinery moved was 
astounding — I started to say appalling. Three 
streets converging into the place were glutted 
with men, extending from curb to curb; and 
[90] 



"MARSCH, MARSCH, MARSCH" 

for an outlet there was but one somewhat 
wider street, which twisted its course under 
the gray walls of the church. Yet somehow 
the various lines melted together and went 
thumping off out of sight like streams running 
down a funnel and out at the spout. 

Never, so far as we could tell, was there 
any congestion, any hitch, any suggestion of 
confusion. Frequently there would come from 
a sideway a group of officers on horseback, or 
a whole string of commandeered touring cars 
bearing monocled, haughty staff officers in the 
tonneaus, with guards riding beside the chauf- 
feurs and small slick trunks strapped on 
behind. A whistle would sound shrilly then; 
and magically a gap would appear in the forma- 
tion. Into this gap the horsemen or the im- 
perious automobiles would slip, and away the 
column would go again without having been 
disturbed or impeded noticeably. No stage 
manager ever handled his supers better; and 
here, be it remembered, there were uncountable 
thousands of supers, and for a stage the twist- 
ing, medieval convolutions of a strange city. 

Now for a space of minutes it would be in- 
fantry that passed, at the swinging lunge of 
German foot soldiers on a forced march. Now 
it would be cavalry, with accouterments 
jingling and horses scrouging in the close- 
packed ranks; else a battery of the viperish 
looking little rapid-fire guns, or a battery of 
heavier cannon, with cloth fittings over their 
[911 



PATHS OF GLORY 



ugly snouts, like muzzled dogs whose bark is 
bad and whose bite is worse. 

Then, always in due order, would succeed 
the field telegraph corps; the field post-office 
corps; the Red Cross corps; the brass band of, 
say, forty pieces; and all the rest of it, to the 
extent of a thousand and one circus parades 
rolled together. There were boats for making 
pontoon bridges, mounted side by side on 
wagons, with the dried mud of the River 
Meuse still on their flat bottoms; there were 
baggage trains miles in length, wherein the 
supply of regular army wagons was eked out 
with nondescript vehicles — even family car- 
riages and delivery vans gathered up hastily, 
as the signs on their sides betrayed, from the 
tradespeople of a dozen Northern German 
cities and towns, and now bearing chalk 
marks on them to show in what division they 
belonged. And inevitably at the tail of each 
regiment came its cook wagons, with fires 
kindled and food cooking for supper in the big 
portable ranges, so that when these passed 
the air would be charged with that pungent 
reek of burning wood which makes an Ameri- 
can think of a fire engine on its way to answer 
an alarm. 

Once, as a cook perched on a step at the back 
of his wagon bent forward to stir the stew 
with a spoon almost big enough for a spade, 
I saw under his hiked-up coat-tails that at 
the back of his gray trousers there were four 
[92] 



"MARSCH, MARSCH, MARSCH" 

suspender buttons in a row instead of two. 
The purpose of this was plain: when his sus- 
penders chafed him he might, by shifting the 
straps to different buttons, shift the strain on 
his shoulders. All German soldiers' trousers 
have this extra garnishment of buttons aft. 

Somebody thought of that. Somebody 
thought of everything. 

We in America are accustomed to think of 
the Germans as an obese race, swinging big 
paunches in front of them; but in that army 
the only fat men we saw were officers, and 
not so many of them. On occasion, some 
colonel, beefy as a brisket and with rolls of 
fat on the back of his close-shaved neck, 
would be seen bouncing by, balancing his 
tired stomach on his saddle pommel; but, 
without exception, the men in the ranks were 
trained down and fine drawn. They bent 
forward under the weight of their knapsacks 
and blanket rolls; and their middles were bulky 
with cartridge belts, and bulging pockets 
covered their flanks. 

Inside the shapeless uniforms, however, 
their limbs swung with athletic freedom, and 
even at the fag-end of a hard day's marching, 
with perhaps several hours of marching yet 
ahead of them, they carried their heavy guns 
as though those guns were toys. Their fair 
sunburned faces were lined with sweat marks 
and masked under dust, and doubtless some 
were desperately weary; but I did not see a 
[93] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



straggler. To date I presume I have seen up- 
ward of a million of these German soldiers on 
the march, and I have yet to see a straggler. 

For the most part the rank and file were 
stamped by their faces and their limbs as being 
of peasant blood or of the petty artisan type; 
but here and there, along with the butcher 
and the baker and the candlestick maker, 
passed one of a slenderer build, usually spec- 
tacled and wearing, even in this employment, 
the unmistakable look of the cultured, scholarly 
man. 

And every other man, regardless of his 
breed, held a cheap cigar between his front 
teeth; but the wagon drivers and many of the 
cavalrymen smoked pipes — the long-stemmed, 
china-bowled pipe, which the German loves. 
The column moved beneath a smoke-wreath of 
its own making. 

The thing, however, which struck one most 
forcibly was the absolute completeness, the 
perfect uniformity, of the whole scheme. Any 
man's equipment was identically like any other 
man's equipment. Every drinking cup dangled 
behind its owner's spine-tip at precisely the 
same angle; every strap and every buckle 
matched. These Germans had been run 
through a mold and they had all come out 
soldiers. And, barring a few general officers, 
they were all young men — men yet on the 
sunny side of thirty. Later we were to see 
plenty of older men — reserves and Landwehr — 
[94] 



"MARSCH, MARSCH, MARSCH" 

but this was the pick of the western line that 
passed through Louvain, the chosen product of 
the active wing of the service. 

Out of the narrow streets the marchers 
issued; and as they reached the broader space 
before the town hall each company would 
raise a song, beating with its heavy boots on 
the paving stones to mark the time. Presently 
we detected a mutter of resentment rising 
from the troops; and seeking the cause of this 
we discerned that some of them had caught 
sight of a big Belgian flag which whipped in 
the breeze from the top of the Church of Saint 
Pierre. However, the flag stayed where it had 
been put during the three days we remained 
in Louvain. Seemingly the German commander 
did not greatly care whose flag flew on the 
church tower overhead so long as he held 
dominion of the earth below and the dwellers 
thereof. 

Well, we watched the gray ear-wig wriggling 
away to the westward until we were surfeited, 
and then we set about finding a place where 
we might rest our dizzy heads. We could not 
get near the principal hotels. These already 
were filled with high officers and ringed about 
with sentries; but half a mile away, on the 
plaza fronting the main railroad station, we 
finally secured accommodations — such as they 
were — at a small fourth-rate hotel. 

It called itself by a gorgeous title — it was 
the House of the Thousand Columns, which 
[951 



PATHS OF GLORY 



was as true a saying as though it had been 
named the House of the One Column; for it 
had neither one column nor a thousand, but 
only a small, dingy beer bar below and some 
ten dismal living rooms above. Established 
here, we set about getting in touch with the 
German higher-ups, since we were likely to be 
mistaken for Englishmen, which would be 
embarrassing certainly, and might even be 
painful. At the hotel next door — for all the 
buildings flanking this square were hotels of a 
sort — we found a group of officers. 

One of them, a tall, handsome, magnetic 
chap, with a big, deep laugh and a most beau- 
tiful command of our own tongue, turned out 
to be a captain on the general staff. It seemed 
to him the greatest joke in the world that four 
American correspondents should come looking 
for war in a taxicab, and should find it too. 
He beat himself on his flanks in the excess 
of his joy, and called up half a dozen friends 
to hear the amazing tale; and they enjoyed it too. 

He said he felt sure his adjutant would ap- 
preciate the joke; and, as incidentally his ad- 
jutant was the person in all the world we wanted 
most just then to see, we went with him to 
headquarters, which was a mile away in the 
local Palais de Justice — or, as we should say 
in America, the courthouse. By now it was 
good and dark; and as no street lamps burned 
we walked through a street that was like a 
tunnel for blackness. 

[961 



'MARSCH, MARSCH, MARSCH 



The roadway was full of infantry still press- 
ing forward to a camping place somewhere 
beyond the town. We could just make out the 
shadowy shapes of the men, but their feet 
made a noise like thunderclaps, and they sang 
a German marching song with a splendid lilt 
and swing to it. 

"Just listen!" said the captain proudly. 
"They are always like that — they march all 
day and half the night, and never do they 
grow weary. They are in fine spirits — our 
men. And we can hardly hold them back. 
They will go forward — always forward! 

"In this war we have no such command as 
Retreat! That word we have blotted out. 
Either we shall go forward or we shall die! 
We do not expect to fall back, ever. The men 
know this; and if our generals would but let 
them they would run to Paris instead of walk- 
ing there." 

I think it was not altogether through vain- 
glory he spoke. He was not a bombastic sort. 
I think he voiced the intent of the army to 
which he belonged. 

At the Palais de Justice the adjutant was 
not to be seen; so our guide volunteered to 
write a note of introduction for us. Standing 
in a doorway of the building, where a light 
burned, he opened a small flat leather pack 
that swung from his belt, along with the excel- 
lent map of Belgium inclosed in a leather frame 
which every German officer carried. We mar- 
[97J 



PATHS OF GLORY 



veled that the pack contained pencils, pens, 
inkpot, seals, officially stamped envelopes and 
note paper, and blank forms of various devices. 
Verily these Germans had remembered all 
things and forgotten nothing. I said that to 
myself mentally at the moment; nor have I 
had reason since to withdraw or qualify the 
remark. 

The next morning I saw the adjutant, whose 
name was Renner and whose title was that of 
major; but first I, as spokesman, underwent a 
search for hidden weapons at the hands of a 
secret service man. Major Renner was most 
courteous; also he was amused to hear the de- 
tails of our taxicabbing expedition into his 
lines. But of the desire which lay nearest 
our hearts — to get back to Brussels in time 
haply to witness its occupation by the Ger- 
mans — he would not hear. 

"For your own sakes," thus he explained it, 
"I dare not let you gentlemen go. Terrible 
things have happened. Last night a colonel 
of infantry was murdered while he was asleep; 
and I have just heard that fifteen of our sol- 
diers had their throats cut, also as they slept. 
From houses our troops have been fired on, 
and between here and Brussels there has been 
much of this guerrilla warfare on us. To those 
who do such things and to those who protect 
them we show no mercy. We shoot them on 
the spot and burn their houses to the ground. 

"I can well understand that the Belgians 
[98] 



"MARSCH, MARSCH, MARSCH" 

resent our coming into their country. We our- 
selves regret it; but it was a military necessity. 
We could do nothing else. If the Belgians put 
on uniforms and enroll as soldiers and fight us 
openly, we shall capture them if we can; we 
shall kill them if we must; but in all cases we 
shall treat them as honorable enemies, fighting 
under the rules of civilized warfare. 

"But this shooting from ambush by civilians; 
this murdering of our people in the night — 
that we cannot endure. We have made a 
rule that if shots are fired by a civilian from 
a house then we shall burn that house; and we 
shall kill that man and all the other men in 
that house whom we suspect of harboring him 
or aiding him. 

"We make no attempt to disguise our 
methods of reprisal. We are willing for the 
world to know it; and it is not because I wish 
to cover up or hide any of our actions from 
your eyes, and from the eyes of the American 
people, that I am refusing you passes for your 
return to Brussels to-day. But, you see, our 
men have been terribly excited by these crimes 
of the Belgian populace, and in their excite- 
ment they might make serious mistakes. 

"Our troops are under splendid discipline, 
as you may have seen already for yourselves. 
And I assure you the Germans are not a blood- 
thirsty or a drunken or a barbarous people; 
but in every army there are fools and, what is 
worse, in every army there are brutes. You 
[99] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



are strangers; and if you passed along the 
road to-day some of our more ignorant men, 
seeing that you were not natives and suspect- 
ing your motives, might harm you. There 
might be some stupid, angry common soldier, 
some over-zealous under officer — you under- 
stand me, do you not, gentlemen? 

"So you will please remain here quietly, 
having nothing to do with any of our men 
who may seek to talk with you. That last is 
important; for I may tell you that our secret- 
service people have already reported your pres- 
ence, and they naturally are anxious to make a 
showing. 

"At the end of one day — perhaps two — we 
shall be able, I think, to give you safe conduct 
back to Brussels. And then I hope you will 
be able to speak a good word to the American 
public for our army." 

After this fashion of speaking I heard now 
from the lips of Major Renner what I subse- 
quently heard fifty times from other army men, 
and likewise from high German civilians, of 
the common German attitude toward Belgium. 
Often these others have used almost the same 
words he used. Invariably they have sought 
to convey the same meaning. 

For those three days we stayed on unwillingly 
in Louvain we were not once out of sight of 
German soldiers, nor by day or night out of 
sound of their threshing feet and their rum- 
bling wheels. We never looked) this way or 
[1001 



"MARSCH, MARSCH, MARSCH" 

that but we saw their gray masses blocking 
up the distances. We never entered shop or 
house but we found Germans already there. 
We never sought to turn off the main-traveled 
streets into a byway but our path was barred 
by a guard seeking to know our business. 
And always, as we noted, for this duty those 
in command had chosen soldiers who knew a 
smattering of French, in order that the sentries 
might be able to speak with the citizens. If 
we passed along a sidewalk the chances were 
that it would be lined thick with soldiers 
lying against the walls resting, or sitting on 
the curbs, with their shoes off, easing their 
feet. If we looked into the sky our prospects 
for seeing a monoplane flying about were 
most excellent. If we entered a square it was 
bound to be jammed with horses and packed 
baggage trains and supply wagons. The at- 
mosphere was laden with the ropy scents of 
the boiling stews and with the heavier smells 
of the soldiers' unwashed bodies and their 
sweating horses. 

Finally, to their credit be it said, we per- 
sonally did not see one German, whether officer 
or private, who mistreated any citizen, or 
was offensively rude to any citizen, or who 
refused to pay a fair reckoning for what he 
bought, or who was conspicuously drunk. 
The postcard venders of Louvain must have 
grown fat with wealth; for, next to bottled beer 
and butter and cheap cigars, every common 
[101] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



soldier craved postcards above all other com- 
modities. 

We grew tired after a while of seeing Ger- 
mans; it seemed to us that every vista always 
had been choked with unshaved, blond, blocky, 
short-haired men in rawhide boots and ill- 
fitting gray tunics; and that every vista 
always would be. It took a new kind of gun, 
or an automobile with a steel prow for charging 
through barbed-wire entanglements, or a group 
of bedraggled Belgian prisoners slouching by 
under convoy, to make us give the spectacle 
more than a passing glance. 

There was something hypnotic, something 
tremendously wearisome to the mind in those 
thick lines flowing sluggishly along in streams 
like molten lead; in the hedges of gun barrels 
all slanting at the same angle; in the same 
types of faces repeated and repeated count- 
lessly; in the legs which scissored by in such 
faultless unison and at each clip of each pair 
of living shears cut off just so much of the 
road — never any more and never any less, but 
always just exactly so much. 

Our jaded and satiated fancies had been fed 
on soldiers and all the cumbersome pageantry 
of war until they refused to be quickened by 
what, half a week before, would have set every 
nerve tingling. Almost the only thing that 
stands out distinct in my memory from the 
confused recollections of the last morning 
spent in Louvain is a huge sight-seeing car — 
[102] 



"MARSCH, MARSCH, MARSCH" 

of the sort known at home as a rubberneck 
wagon — which lumbered by us with Red Cross 
men perched like roosting gray birds on all its 
seats. We estimated we saw two hundred 
thousand men in motion through the ancient 
town. We learned afterward we had under- 
figured the total by at least a third. 

During these days the life of Louvain went 
on, so far as our alien eyes could judge, pretty 
much as it probably did in the peace times pre- 
ceding. At night, obeying an order, the people 
stayed within their doors; in the daylight hours 
they pursued their customary business, not 
greatly incommoded apparently by the pres- 
ence of the conqueror. If there was simmering 
hate in the hearts of the men and women of 
Louvain it did not betray itself in their sobered 
faces. I saw a soldier, somewhat fuddled, 
seize a serving maid about the waist and kiss 
her; he received a slap in the face and fell 
back in bad order, while his mates cheered the 
spunky girl. A minute later she emerged 
from the house to which she had retreated, 
seemingly ready to swap slaps for kisses some 
more. 

However, from time to time sinister sugges- 
tions did obtrude themselves on us. For ex- 
ample, on the second morning of our enforced 
stay at the House of the Thousand Columns 
we watched a double- file of soldiers going 
through a street toward the Palais de Justice. 
Two roughly clad natives walked between the 
[103] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



lines of bared bayonets. One was an old man 
who walked proudly with his head erect. He 
was like a man going to a feast. The other 
was bent almost double, and his hands were 
tied behind his back. 

A few minutes afterward a barred yellow 
van, under escort, came through the square 
fronting the railroad station and disappeared 
behind a mass of low buildings. From that 
direction we presently heard shots. Soon the 
van came back, unescorted this time; and 
behind it came Belgians with Red Cross arm 
badges, bearing on their shoulders two litters 
on which were still figures covered with blan- 
kets, so that only the stockinged feet showed. 

Twice thereafter this play was repeated, 
with slight variations, and each time we Amer- 
icans, looking on from our front windows, drew 
our own conclusions. Also, from the same 
vantage point we saw an automobile pass 
bearing a couple of German officers and a 
little, scared-looking man in a frock coat and 
a high hat, whose black mustache stood out 
like a charcoal mark against the very white 
background of his face. This little man, we 
learned, was the burgomaster, and this day he 
was being held a prisoner and responsible for 
the good conduct of some fifty-odd thousand 
of his fellow citizens. That night our host, 
a gross, silent man in carpet slippers, told us 
the burgomaster was ill in bed at home. 

"He suffers," explained our landlord in 
[104] 



MARSCH, MARSCH, MARSCH" 



French, "from a crisis of the nerves." The 
French language is an expressive language. 

Then, coming a pace nearer, our landlord 
added a question in a cautious whisper. 

"Messieurs," he asked, "do you think it 
can be true, as my neighbors tell me, that 
the United States President has ordered the 
Germans to get out of our country?" 

We shook our heads, and he went silently 
away in his carpet slippers; and his broad 
Flemish face gave no hint of what corrosive 
thoughts he may have had in his heart. 

It was Wednesday morning when we entered 
Louvain. It was Saturday morning when we 
left it. This last undertaking was preceded 
by difficulties. As a preliminary to it we vis- 
ited in turn all the stables in Louvain where 
ordinarily horses and wheeled vehicles could 
be had for hire. 

Perhaps there were no horses left in the stalls 
— thanks to either Belgian foragers or to Ger- 
man — or, if there were horses, no driver would 
risk his hide on the open road among the Ger- 
man pack trains and rear guards. At length 
we did find a tall, red-haired Walloon who 
said he would go anywhere on earth, and pro- 
vide a team for the going, if we paid the price 
he asked. We paid it in advance, in case any- 
thing should happen on the way, and he took 
us in a venerable open carriage behind two 
crow-bait skeletons that had once, in a happier 
day when hay was cheaper, been horses. 
[105] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



We drove slowly, taking the middle of the 
wide Brussels road. On our right, traveling 
in the same direction, crawled an unending 
line of German baggage wagons and pontoon 
trucks. On our left, going the opposite way, 
was another line, also unending, made up of 
refugee villagers, returning afoot to the towns 
beyond Louvain from which they had fled 
four days earlier. They were footsore and they 
limped; they were of all ages and most miser- 
able-looking. And, one and all, they were as 
tongueless as so many ghosts. Thus we 
traveled; and at the end of the first hour came 
to the tiny town of Leefdael. 

At Leefdael there must have been fighting, 
for some of the houses were gutted by shells. 
At least two had been burned; and a big tin 
sign at a railroad crossing had become a tin 
colander where flying lead had sieved it. In 
a beet patch beside one of the houses was a 
mound of fresh earth the length of a long man, 
with a cross of sticks at the head of it. A 
Belgian soldier's cap was perched on the up- 
right and a scrap of paper was made fast to 
the cross arm; and two peasants stood there 
apparently reading what was written on the 
paper. Later such sights as these were to 
become almost the commonest incidents of 
our countryside campaignings; but now we 
looked with all our eyes. 

Except that the roadside ditches were littered 
with beer bottles and scraps of paper, and the 
[106] 



"MARSCH, MARSCH, MARSCH" 

road itself rutted by cannon wheels, we saw 
little enough after leaving Leefdael to suggest 
that an army had come this way until we were 
in the outskirts of Brussels. In a tree-edged, 
grass-plotted boulevard at the edge of the 
Bois, toward Tervueren, cavalry had halted. 
The turf was scarred with hoofprints and 
strewed with hay; and there was a row of small 
trenches in which the Germans had built their 
fires to do their cooking. The sod, which had 
been removed to make these trenches, was 
piled in neat little terraces, ready to be put 
back; and care plainly had been taken by the 
troopers to avoid damaging the bark on the 
trunks of the ash and elm trees. 

There it was — the German system of warfare ! 
These Germans might carry on their war after 
the most scientifically deadly plan the world 
has ever known; they might deal out their 
peculiarly fatal brand of drumhead justice to 
all civilians who crossed their paths bearing 
arms; they might burn and waste for punish- 
ment; they might lay on a captured city and 
a whipped province a tribute of foodstuffs and 
an indemnity of money heavier than any 
civilized race has ever demanded of the cowed 
and conquered — might do all these things and 
more besides — but their common troopers 
saved the sods of the greensward for replanting 
and spared the boles of the young shade trees! 

Next day we again left Brussels, the sub- 
missive, and made a much longer excursion 
[1071 



PATHS OF GLORY 



under German auspices. And, at length, after 
much travail, we landed in the German fron- 
tier city of Aix-la-Chapelle, where I wrote 
these lines. There it was, two days after our 
arrival, that we heard of the fate of Louvain 
and of that pale little man, the burgomaster, 
who had survived his crisis of the nerves to 
die of a German bullet. 

We wondered what became of the proprietor 
of the House of the Thousand Columns; and 
of the young Dutch tutor in the Berlitz School 
of Languages, who had served us as a guide 
and interpreter; and of the pretty, gentle 
little Flemish woman who brought us our meals 
in her clean, small restaurant round the corner 
from the Hotel de Ville; and of the kindly, 
red-bearded priest at the Church of Saint 
Jacques, who gave us ripe pears and old wine. 

I reckon we shall always wonder what be- 
came of them, and that we shall never know. 
I hoped mightily that the American wing of 
the big Catholic seminary had been spared. 
It had a stone figure of an American Indian — 
looking something like Sitting Bull, we thought 
— over its doors ; and that was the only typically 
American thing we saw in all Louvain. 

When next I saw Louvain the University 
was gone and the stone Indian was gone too. 



[1081 



CHAPTER V 
BEING A GUEST OF THE KAISER 



YOU know how four of us blundered into 
the German lines in a taxicab; and how, 
getting out of German hands after three 
days and back to Brussels, we under- 
took, in less than twenty-four hours thereafter, 
to trail the main forces then shoving steadily 
southward with no other goal before them but 
Paris. 

First by hired hack, as we used to say when 
writing accounts of funerals down in Paducah, 
then afoot through the dust, and finally, with 
an equipment consisting of that butcher's su- 
perannuated dogcart, that elderly mare emer- 
itus and those two bicycles, we made our 
zigzagging way downward through Belgium. 

We knew that our credentials were, for Ger- 
man purposes, of most dubious and uncertain 
value. We knew that the Germans were per- 
mitting no correspondents — not even German 
correspondents — to accompany them. We 
[1091 



PATHS OF GLORY 



knew that any alien caught in the German 
front was liable to death on the spot, without 
investigation of his motives. We knew all 
these things; and the knowledge of them gave 
a fellow tingling sensations in the tips of his 
toes when he permitted himself to think about 
his situation. But, after the first few hours, 
we took heart unto ourselves; for everywhere 
we met only kindness and courtesy at the hands 
of the Kaiser's soldiers, men and officers alike. 

There was, it is true, the single small instance 
of the excited noncom. who poked a large, un- 
wholesome-looking automatic pistol into my 
shrinking diaphragm when he wanted me to 
get off the running board of a military auto- 
mobile into which I had climbed, half a minute 
before, by invitation of the private who steered 
it. I gathered his meaning right away, even 
though he uttered only guttural German and 
that at the top of his voice; a pointed revolver 
speaks with a tongue which is understood by 
all peoples. Besides, he had the distinct ad- 
vantage in repartee; and so, with no extended 
argument, I got down from there and he 
pouched his ironmongery. I regarded the inci- 
dent as being closed and was perfectly willing 
that it should remain closed. 

That, however, though of consuming inter- 
est to me at the moment, was but a detail — 
an exception to prove the standing rule. One 
place we dined with a Rittmeister' s mess; and 
while we sat, eating of their midday ration of 
11101 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



thick pea soup with sliced sausages in it, some 
of the younger officers stood; also they let us 
stretch our wearied legs on their mattresses, 
which were ranged seven in a row on the parlor 
floor of a Belgian house, where from a corner 
a plaster statue of Joan of Arc gazed at us 
with her plaster eyes. 

Common soldiers offered repeatedly to share 
their rye-bread sandwiches and bottled beer 
with us. Not once, but a dozen times, officers 
of various rank let us look at their maps and 
use their field glasses; and they gave us advice 
for reaching the zone of actual fighting and 
swapped gossip with us, and frequently regret- 
ted that they had no spare mounts or spare 
automobiles to loan us. 

We attributed a good deal of this to the in- 
herent kindliness of the German gentleman's 
nature; but more of it we attributed to a new- 
born desire on the part of these men to have 
disinterested journalists see with their own 
eyes the scope and result of the German op- 
erations, in the hope that the truth regarding 
alleged German atrocities might reach the out- 
side world and particularly might reach Amer- 
ica. 

Of the waste and wreckage of war; of deso- 
lated homes and shattered villages; of the 
ruthless, relentless, punitive exactness with 
which the Germans punished not only those 
civilians they accused of firing on them but 
those they suspected of giving harbor or aid 
[HI] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



to the offenders; of widows and orphans; of 
families of innocent sufferers, without a roof 
to shelter them or a bite to stay them; of fair 
lands plowed by cannon balls, and harrowed 
with rifle bullets, and sown with dead men's 
bones; of men horribly maimed and mangled 
by lead and steel; of long mud trenches where 
the killed lay thick under the fresh clods — of 
all this and more I saw enough to cure any man 
of the delusion that war is a beautiful, glorious, 
inspiring thing, and to make him know it for 
what it is — altogether hideous and unutterably 
awful. 

As for Uhlans spearing babies on their lances, 
and officers sabering their own men, and sol- 
diers murdering and mutilating and torturing 
at will — I saw nothing. I knew of these tales 
only from having read them in the dispatches 
sent from the Continent to England, and from 
there cabled to American papers. 

Even so, I hold no brief for the Germans; 
or for the reasons that inspired them in waging 
this war; or for the fashion after which they 
have waged it. I am only trying to tell what 
I saw with my own eyes and heard with my 
own ears. 

Be all that as it may, we straggled into Beau- 
mont — five of us — on the evening of the third 
day out from Brussels, without baggage or 
equipment, barring only what we wore on our 
several tired and drooping backs. As in the case 
of our other trip, a simple sight-seeing ride 
[112] 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



had resolved itself into an expeditionary cam- 
paign; and so there we were, bearing, as proof 
of our good faith and professional intentions, 
only our American passports, our passes issued 
by General von Jarotzky, at Brussels, and — 
most potent of all for winning confidence from 
the casual eye — a little frayed silk American 
flag, with a hole burned in it by a careless cigar 
butt, which was knotted to the front rail of 
our creaking dogcart. 

Immediately after passing the ruined and 
deserted village of Montignies St. Christophe, 
we came at dusk to a place where a company 
of German infantrymen were in camp about a 
big graystone farmhouse. They were cooking 
supper over big trench fires and, as usual, they 
were singing. The light shone up into the faces 
of the cooks, bringing out in ruddy relief their 
florid skins and yellow beards. A yearling bull 
calf was tied to a supply-wagon wheel, bellowing 
his indignation. I imagine he quit bellowing 
shortly thereafter. 

An officer came to the edge of the road and, 
peering sharply at us over a broken hedge, 
made as if to stop us; then changed his mind 
and permitted us to go unchallenged. Enter- 
ing the town, we proceeded, winding our way 
among pack trains and stalled motor trucks, 
to the town square. Our little cavalcade 
halted to the accompaniment of good-natured 
titterings from many officers in front of the 
town house of the Prince de Caraman-Chimay. 
[1131 



PATHS OF GLORY 



By a few Americans the prince is remembered 
as having been the cousin of one of the husbands 
of the much-married Clara Ward, of Detroit; 
but at this moment, though absent, he had par- 
ticularly endeared himself to the Germans 
through the circumstance of his having left 
behind, in his wine cellars, twenty thousand 
bottles of rare vintages. Wine, I believe, is 
contraband of war. Certainly in this instance 
it was. As we speedily discovered, it was a 
very unlucky common soldier who did not 
have a swig of rare Burgundy or ancient claret 
to wash down his black bread and sausage that 
night at supper. 

Unwittingly we had bumped into the head- 
quarters of the whole army — not of a single 
corps, but of an army. In the thickening twi- 
light on the little square gorgeous staff officers 
came and went, afoot, on horseback and in 
automobiles; and through an open window we 
caught a glimpse of a splendid-looking general, 
sitting booted and sword-belted at a table in 
the Prince de Caraman-Chimay's library, with 
hunting trophies — skin and horn and claw — 
looking down at him from the high-paneled 
oak wainscotings, and spick-and-span aides 
waiting to take his orders and discharge his 
commissions. 

It dawned on us that, having accidentally 

slipped through a hole in the German rear 

guard, we had reached a point close to the 

front of operations. We felt uncomfortable. 

[114] 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



It was not at all likely that a Herr Over- 
Commander would expedite us with the gra- 
ciousness that had marked his underlings back 
along the line of communication. We re- 
marked as much to one another; and it was a 
true prophecy. A staff officer — a colonel who 
spoke good English — received us at the door 
of the villa and examined our papers in the 
light which streamed over his shoulder from a 
fine big hallway behind him. In everything, 
both then and thereafter, he was most polite. 

"I do not understand how you came here, 
you gentlemen," he said at length. "We have 
no correspondents with our army." 

"You have now," said one of us, seeking to 
brighten the growing embarrassment of the 
situation with a small jape. 

Perhaps he did not understand. Perhaps it 
was against the regulations for a colonel, in full 
caparison of sword and shoulder straps, to 
laugh at a joke from a dusty, wayworn, shabby 
stranger in a dented straw hat and a wrinkled 
Yankee-made coat. At any rate this colonel 
did not laugh. 

"You did quite right to report yourselves 
here and explain your purposes," he continued 
gravely; "but it is impossible that you may pro- 
ceed. To-morrow morning we shall give you 
escort and transportation back to Brussels. 
I anticipate" — here he glanced quizzically at 
our aged mare, drooping knee-sprung between 
the shafts of the lopsided dogcart — "I antici- 
[115] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



pate that you will return more speedily than 
you arrived. 

"You will kindly report to me here in the 
morning at eleven. Meantime remember, 
gentlemen, that you are not prisoners — by no 
means, not. You may consider yourselves 
for the time being as — shall we say? — guests 
of the German Army, temporarily detained. 
You are at perfect liberty to come and go — 
only I should advise you not to go too far, 
because if you should try to leave town to- 
night our soldiers would certainly shoot you 
quite dead. It is not agreeable to be shot; 
and, besides, your great Government might 
object. So, then, I shall have the pleasure of 
seeing you in the morning, shall I not? Yes? 
Good night, gentlemen!" 

He clicked his neat heels so that his spurs 
jangled, and bowed us out into the dark. The 
question of securing lodgings loomed large and 
imminent before us. Officers filled the few 
small inns and hotels; soldiers, as we could see, 
were quartered thickly in all the houses in 
sight; and already the inhabitants were lock- 
ing their doors and dousing their lights in 
accordance with an order from a source that 
was not to be disobeyed. Nine out of ten 
houses about the square were now but black 
oblongs rising against the gray sky. We had 
nowhere to go; and yet if we did not go some- 
where, and that pretty soon, the patrols would 
undoubtedly take unpleasant cognizance of 
[116] 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



our presence. Besides, the searching chill of 
a Belgian night was making us stiff. 

Scouting up a narrow winding alley, one of 
the party who spoke German found a court- 
yard behind a schoolhouse called imposingly 
L'Ecole Moyenne de Beaumont, where he ob- 
tained permission from a German sergeant to 
stable our mare for the night in the aristocratic 
companionship of a troop of officers' horses. 
Through another streak of luck we preempted 
a room in the schoolhouse and held it against 
all comers by right of squatter sovereignty. 
There my friends and I slept on the stone floor, 
with a scanty amount of hay under us for a bed 
and our coats for coverlets. But before we 
slept we dined. 

We dined on hard-boiled eggs and stale cheese 
— which we had saved from midday — in a big, 
bare study hall half full of lancers. They gave us 
rye bread and some of the Prince de Caraman- 
Chimay's wine to go with the provender we 
had brought, and they made room for us at 
the long benches that ran lengthwise of the 
room. Afterward one of them — a master musi- 
cian, for all his soiled gray uniform and grimed 
fingers — played a piano that was in the corner, 
while all the rest sang. 

It was a strange picture they made there. 
On the wall, on a row of hooks, still hung the 
small umbrellas and book-satchels of the 
pupils. Presumably at the coming of the 
Germans they had run home in such a panic 
[117] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



that they left their school-traps behind. There 
were sums in chalk, half erased, on the black- 
board; and one of the troopers took a scrap 
of chalk and wrote "On to Paris!" in big let- 
ters here and there. A sleepy parrot, looking 
like a bundle of rumpled green feathers, squat- 
ted on its perch in a cage behind the master's 
desk, occasionally emitting a loud squawk as 
though protesting against this intrusion on its 
privacy. 

When their wine had warmed them our sol- 
dier-hosts sang and sang, unendingly. They 
had been on the march all day, and next day 
would probably march half the day and fight 
the other half, for the French and English 
were just ahead; but now they sprawled over 
the school benches and drummed on the boards 
with their fists and feet, and sang at the tops 
of their voices. They sang their favorite 
marching songs — Die Wacht am Rhein, of 
course; and Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber 
Alles! which has a fine, sonorous cathedral 
swing to it; and God Save the King! — with dif- 
ferent words to the air, be it said; and Haltet 
Ausl Also, for variety, they sang Tannen- 
baum — with the same tune as Maryland, My 
Maryland! — and Heil dir im Sieges-kranz; and 
snatches from various operas. 

When one of us asked for Heine's Lorelei 

they sang not one verse of it, or two, but twenty 

or more; and then, by way of compliment 

to the guests of the evening, they reared upon 

[118] 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



their feet and gave us The Star Spangled Banner, 
to German words. Suddenly two of them 
began dancing. In their big rawhide boots, 
with hobbed soles and steel-shod heels, they 
pounded back and forth, while the others 
whooped them on. One of the dancers gave 
out presently; but the other seemed still un- 
impaired in wind and limb. He darted into 
an adjoining room and came back in a minute 
dragging a half-frightened, half-pleased little 
Belgian scullery maid and whirled her about 
to waltz music until she dropped for want of 
breath to carry her another turn; after which 
he did a solo — Teutonic version — of a darky 
breakdown, stopping only to join in the next 
song. 

It was eleven o'clock and they were still 
singing when we left them and went groping 
through dark hallways to where our simple 
hay mattress awaited us. I might add that 
we were indebted to a corporal of lancers for 
the hay, which he pilfered from the feed racks 
outside after somebody had stolen the two 
bundles of straw one of us had previously pur- 
chased. Except for his charity of heart we 
should have lain on the cold flagging. 

The next morning was Thursday morning, 
and by Thursday night, at the very latest, we 
counted on being back in Brussels; but we were 
not destined to see Brussels again for nearly six 
weeks. We breakfasted frugally on good 
bread and execrable coffee at a half-wrecked 
[119] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



little cafe where soldiers had slept; and at 
eleven o'clock, when we had bestowed Bulotte, 
the ancient nag, and the dogcart on an ac- 
commodating youth — giving them to him as a 
gracious gift, since neither he nor anyone else 
would buy the outfit at any price — we repaired 
to the villa to report ourselves and start on 
our return to the place whence we had come so 
laboriously. 

The commander and his staff were just leav- 
ing, and they were in a big hurry. We knew 
the reason for their hurry, for since daylight 
the sound of heavy firing to the south and 
southwest, across the border in the neighbor- 
hood of Maubeuge, had been plainly audible. 
Officers in long gray overcoats with facings of 
blue, green, black, yellow and four shades of red 
— depending on the branches of the service to 
which they belonged — were piling into auto- 
mobiles and scooting away. 

As we sat on a wooden bench before the 
prince's villa, waiting for further instructions 
from our friend of the night before — meaning 
by that the colonel who could not take a 
joke, but could make one of his own — a tall, 
slender young man of about twenty-four, with 
a little silky mustache and a long, vulpine nose, 
came striding across the square with long steps. 
As nearly as we could tell, he wore a colonel's 
shoulder straps; and, aside from the fact that 
he seemed exceedingly youthful to be a colonel, 
we were astonished at the deference that was 
[120] 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



paid him by those of higher rank, who stood 
about waiting for their cars. Generals, and 
the like, even grizzled old generals with breasts 
full of decorations, bowed and clicked before 
him; and when he, smiling broadly, insisted 
on shaking hands with all of them, some of the 
group seemed overcome with gratification. 

Presently a sort of family resemblance in his 
face to some one whose picture we had seen 
often somewhere began to impress itself on us, 
and we wondered who he was ; but, being rather 
out of the setting ourselves, none of us cared 
to ask. Two weeks later, in Aix-la-Chapelle, 
I was passing a shop and saw his likeness in 
full uniform on a souvenir postcard in the 
window. It was Prince August Wilhelm, 
fourth son of the Kaiser; and we had seen him 
as he was about getting his first taste of being 
under fire by the enemy. 

Pretty soon he was gone and our colonel was 
gone, and nearly everybody else was gone too; 
Companies of infantry and cavalry fell in and 
moved off, and a belated battery of field artil- 
lery rumbled out of sight up the twisting main 
street. The field postoffice staff, the field 
telegraph staff, the Red Cross corps and the 
wagon trains followed in due turn, leaving 
behind only a small squad to hold the town — 
and us. 

A tall young lieutenant was in charge of 
the handful who remained; and, by the same 
token, as was to transpire, he was also in 
[121] 



PATHS OP GLORY 



charge of us. He was built for a football 
player, and he had shoulders like a Cyclops, 
and his family name was Mittendorfer. He 
never spoke to his men except to roar at them 
like a raging lion, and he never addressed us 
except to coo as softly as the mourning dove. 
It was interesting to listen as his voice changed 
from a bellow to a croon, and back again a 
moment later to a bellow. With training he 
might have made an opera singer — he had such 
a vocal range and such perfect control over it. 

This Lieutenant Mittendorfer introduced 
himself to our attention by coming smartly up 
and saying there had been a delay about 
requisitioning an automobile for our use; but 
he thought the car would be along very shortly 
— and would the American gentlemen be so 
good as to wait? There being nothing else to 
do, we decided to do as he suggested. 

We chose for our place of waiting a row of 
seats before a taverne, and there we sat, side 
by side, keeping count of the guns booming 
in the distance, until it began to rain. A ser- 
geant came up then and invited us to go with 
him, in order that we might escape a wetting. 
He waved us into the doorway of a house 
two doors from where we had been sitting, at 
the same time suggesting to us that we throw 
away our cigars and cigarettes. When we 
crossed the threshold we realized the good 
intention behind this advice, seeing that the 
room we entered, which had been a shop of 
[122] 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



sorts, was now an improvised powder maga- 
zine. 

From the floor to the height of a man it 
was piled with explosive shells for field guns, 
cased in straw covers like wine bottles, and 
stacked in neat rows, with their noses all point- 
ing one way. Our guide led us along an aisle 
of these deadly things, beckoned us through 
another doorway at the side, where a sentry 
stood with a bayonet fixed on his gun, and 
with a wave of his hand invited us to partake 
of the hospitalities of the place. We looked 
about us, and lo ! we were hard-and-fast in jail ! 

I have been in pleasanter indoor retreats in 
my time, even on rainy afternoons. The room 
was bedded down ankle-deep in straw; and the 
straw, which had probably been fresh the day 
before, already gave off a strong musky odoi* — 
the smell of an animal cage in a zoo. 

For furnishings, the place contained a bench 
and a large iron pot containing a meat stew, 
which had now gone cold, so that a rime of 
gray suet coated the upper half of the pot. 
But of human occupants there was an ample 
sufficiency, considering the cubic space avail- 
able for breathing purposes. Sitting in melan- 
choly array against the walls, with their legs 
half buried in the straw and their backs against 
the baseboards, were eighteen prisoners — two 
Belgian cavalrymen and sixteen Frenchmen — 
mostly Zouaves and chasseurs-a-pied. Also, 
there were three Turcos from Northern Africa, 
[123] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



almost as dark as negroes, wearing red fezzes 
and soiled white, baggy, skirtlike arrangements 
instead of trousers. They all looked very 
dirty, very unhappy and very sleepy. 

At the far side of the room on a bench 
was another group of four prisoners; and 
of these we knew two personally — Gerbeaux, 
a Frenchman who lived in Brussels and served 
as the resident Brussels correspondent of a 
Chicago paper; and Stevens, an American 
artist, originally from Michigan, but who for 
several years had divided his time between 
Paris and Brussels. With them were a Belgian 
photographer, scared now into a quivering heap 
from which two wall-eyes peered out wildly, 
and a negro chauffeur, a soot-black Congo boy 
who had been brought away from Africa on a 
training ship as a child. He, apparently, was 
the least-concerned person in that hole. 

The night before, by chance, we had heard 
that Gerbeaux and Stevens were under deten- 
tion, but until this moment of meeting we did 
not know their exact whereabouts. They — 
the Frenchman, the American and the Belgian 
— had started out from Brussels in an auto 
driven by the African, on Monday, just a day 
behind us. Because their car carried a Red 
Cross flag without authority to do so, and 
because they had a camera with them, they 
very soon found themselves under arrest, and, 
what was worse, under suspicion. Except that 
for two days they had been marched afoot an 
[124] 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



average of twenty-five miles a day, they had 
fared pretty well, barring Stevens. He, being 
separated from the others, had fallen into the 
hands of an officer who treated him with such 
severity that the account of his experiences 
makes a tale worth recounting separately and 
at length. 

We stayed in that place half an hour — one 
of the longest half hours I remember. There 
was a soldier with a fixed bayonet at the door, 
and another soldier with a saw-edged bayonet 
at the window, which was broken. Parties of 
soldiers kept coming to this window to peer 
at the exhibits within; and, as they invariably 
took the civilians for Englishmen who had been 
caught as spies, we attracted almost as much 
attention as the Turcos in their funny ballet 
skirts; in fact I may say we fairly divided the 
center of the stage with the Turcos. 

At the end of half an hour the lieutenant 
bustled in, all apologies, to say there had 
been a mistake and that we should never 
have been put in with the prisoners at all. 
The rain being over, he invited us to come 
outside and get a change of air. When we got 
outside we found that our two bicycles, which 
we had left leaning against the curb, were 
gone. To date they are still gone. 

Again we sat waiting. Finally it occurred 
to us to go inside the little taverne, where, per- 
haps, we should be less conspicuous. We went 
in, and presently we were followed by Lieu- 
[1251 



PATHS OF GLORY 



tenant Mittendorfer, he bringing with him a 
tall young top-sergeant of infantry who carried 
his left arm in a sling and had a three weeks' 
growth of fuzzy red beard on his chops. It 
was explained that this top-sergeant, Rosen- 
thal by name, had been especially assigned to 
be our companion — our playfellow, as it were — 
until such time as the long-delayed automobile 
should appear. 

Sergeant Rosenthal, who was very proud of 
his punctured wrist and very hopeful of getting 
a promotion, went out soon; but it speedily 
became evident that he had not forgotten us. 
For one soldier with his gun appeared in the 
front room of the place, and another material- 
ized just outside the door, likewise with his 
gun. And by certain other unmistakable 
signs it became plain to our perceptions that 
as between being a prisoner of the German army 
and being a guest there was really no great 
amount of difference. It would have taken a 
mathematician to draw the distinction, so fine 
it was. 

We stayed in that taverne and in the small 
living room behind it, and in the small high- 
walled courtyard behind the living room, all 
that afternoon and that evening and that night, 
being visited at intervals by either the lieu- 
tenant or the sergeant, or both of them at once. 
We dined lightly on soldiers' bread and some 
of the prince's wine — furnished by Rosenthal — 
and for dessert we had some shelled almonds 
[126] 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



and half a cake of chocolate — furnished by 
ourselves; also drinks of pale native brandy 
from the bar. 

During the evening we received several 
bulletins regarding the mythical automobile. 
Invariably Mittendorfer was desolated to be 
compelled to report that there had been another 
slight delay. We knew he was desolated, be- 
cause he said he was. During the evening, 
also, we met all the regular members of the 
household living under that much-disturbed 
roof. There was the husband, a big lubberly 
Fleming who apparently did not count for 
much in the economic and domestic scheme of 
the establishment; his wife, a large, command- 
ing woman who ran the business and the house 
as well; his wife's mother, an old sickly woman 
in her seventies; and his wife's sister, a poor, 
palsied half-wit. 

When the sister was a child, so we heard, 
she had been terribly frightened, so that to 
this day, still frightened, she crept about, a 
pale shadow, quivering all over pitiably at 
every sound. She would stand behind a door 
for minutes shaking so that you could hear 
her knuckles knocking against the wall. She 
seemed particularly to dread the sight of the 
German privates who came and went; and 
they, seeing this, were kind to her in a clumsy, 
awkward way. Hourly, like a ghost she 
drifted in and out. 
For a while it looked as though we should 
[127] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



spend the night sitting up in chairs; but 
about ten o'clock three soldiers, led by Rosen- 
thal and accompanied by the landlady, went 
out; and when they came back they brought 
some thick feather mattresses which had been 
commandeered from neighboring houses, we 
judged. Also, through the goodness of his 
heart, Mittendorfer, who impressed us more and 
more as a strange compound of severity and 
softness, took pity on Gerbeaux and Stevens, 
and bringing them forth from that pestilential 
hole next door, he convoyed them in to stay 
overnight with us. They told us that by now 
the air in the improvised prison was abso- 
lutely suffocating, what with the closeness, 
the fouled straw, the stale food and the prox- 
imity of so many dirty human bodies all 
packed into the kennel together. 

Ten of us slept on the floor of that little 
grogshop* — the five of our party lying spoon- 
fashion on two mattresses, Gerbeaux and 
Stevens making seven, and three soldiers. 
The soldiers relieved each other in two-hour 
spells, so that while two of them snored by 
the door the third sat in a chair in the middle 
of the room, with his rifle between his knees, 
and a shaded lamp and a clock on a table at 
his elbow. Just before we turned in, Rosen- 
thal, who had adopted a paternal tone to the 
three guards, each of whom was many years 
older than he, addressed them softly, saying: 

"Now, my children, make yourselves com- 
[128] 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



fortable. Drink what you please; but if any 
one of you gets drunk I shall take pleasure in 
seeing that he gets from seven to nine years 
in prison at hard labor." For which they 
thanked him gratefully in chorus. 

I am not addicted to the diary-keeping 
habit, but during the next day, which was 
Friday, I made fragmentary records of things 
in a journal, from which I now quote verba- 
tim: 

Seven-thirty a. m. — about. After making a 
brief toilet by sousing our several faces in a 
pail of water, we have just breakfasted — 
sketchily — on wine and almonds. It would 
seem that the German army feeds its prisoners, 
but makes no such provision for its guests. 
On the whole I think I should prefer being a 
prisoner. 

We have offered our landlady any amount 
within reason for a pot of coffee and some 
toasted bread; but she protests, calling on 
Heaven to witness the truth of her words, 
that there is nothing to eat in the house — 
that the Germans have eaten up all her store 
of food, and that her old mother is already 
beginning to starve. Yet certain appetizing 
smells, which come down the staircase from up- 
stairs when the door is opened, lead me to 
believe she is deceiving us. I do not blame 
her for treasuring what she has for her own 
flesh and blood; but I certainly could enjoy 
a couple of fried eggs. 

[129] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



Nine a. m. Mittendorfer has been in, with 
vague remarks concerning our automobile. 
Something warns me this young man is trifling 
with us. He appears to be a practitioner of 
the Japanese school of diplomacy — that is, 
he believes it is better to pile one gentle, 
transparent fiction on another until the pyra- 
mid of romance falls of its own weight, rather 
than to break the cruel news at a single blow. 

Eleven-twenty. One of the soldiers has 
brought us half a dozen bottles of good wine — 
three bottles of red and three of white — but 
the larder remains empty. I do not know 
exactly what a larder is; but if it is as empty 
as I am at the present moment it must remind 
itself of a haunted house. 

Eleven-forty. A big van full of wounded 
Germans has arrived. From the windows we 
can see it distinctly. The more seriously hurt 
lie on the bed of the wagon, under the hood. 
The man who drives has one leg in splints; 
and of the two who sit at the tail gate, holding 
rifles upright, one has a bandaged head, and 
the other has an arm in a sling. 

Unless a German is so seriously crippled 
as to be entirely unfitted for service he man- 
ages to do something useful. There are no 
loose ends and no waste to the German mili- 
tary system; I can see that. The soldiers in 
the street cheer the wounded as they pass 
and the wounded answer by singing Die Wacht 
am Rhein feebly. 

[130] 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



One poor chap raises his head and looks 
out. He appears to be almost spent, but 
I see his lips move as he tries to sing. You 
may not care for the German cause, but you 
are bound to admire the German spirit — the 
German oneness of purpose. 

Noon. As the Texas darky said: "Dinner- 
time fur some folks; but just twelve o'clock 
fur me!" Again I smell something cooking 
upstairs. On the mantel of the shabby little 
interior sitting room, where we spend most 
of our time sitting about in a sad circle, is a 
little black-and-tan terrier pup, stuffed and 
mounted, with shiny glass eyes — a family 
pet, I take it, which died and was immortal- 
ized by the local taxidermist. If I only knew 
what that dog was stuffed with I would take 
a chance and eat him. 

I have a fellow feeling for Arctic explorers 
who go north and keep on going until they 
run out of things to eat. I admire their hero- 
ism and sympathize with their sufferings, but 
I deplore their bad judgment. There are 
grapes growing on trellises in the little court- 
yard at the back, but they are too green for 
human consumption. I speak authoritatively 
on this subject, having just sampled one. 

Two p. M. Tried to take a nap, but failed. 
Hansen found a soiled deck of cards behind 
a pile of books on the mantelpiece, and we 
all cheered up, thinking of poker; but it was 
a Belgian deck of thirty-two cards, all the 
[131] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



pips below the seven-spot being eliminated. 
Poker with that deck would be a hazardous 
pursuit. 

McCutcheon remarks casually that he won- 
ders what would , happen if somebody acci- 
dentally touched off those field-gun shells in 
the house two doors away. We suddenly 
remember that they are all pointed our way! 
The conversation seems to lull, and Mac, for 
the time being, loses popularity. 

Two-thirty p. M. Looking out on the 
dreary little square of this town of Beau- 
mont I note that the natives, who have been 
scarce enough all day, have now vanished 
almost entirely; whereas soldiers are notice- 
ably more numerous than they were this morn- 
ing. 

Three-fifteen p. m. Heard a big noise in 
the street and ran to the window in time to 
see about forty English prisoners passing 
under guard — the first English soldiers I have 
seen, in this campaign, either as prisoners or 
otherwise. Their tan khaki uniforms and 
flat caps give them a soldierly look very un- 
like the slovenly, sloppy-appearing French 
prisoners in the guardhouse; but they appear 
to be tremendously downcast. The German 
soldiers crowd up to stare at them, but there 
is no jeering or taunting from the Germans. 
These prisoners are all infantrymen, judging 
by their uniforms. They disappear through 
the gateway of the prince's park. 
[132] 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



Three-forty. I have just had some exer- 
cise; walked from the front door to the court- 
yard and back. There are two guards outside 
the door now instead of one. The German 
army certainly takes mighty good care of its 
guests. 

This day has been as long as Gibbon's 
"Decline and Fall," and much more tiresome. 
No; I'll take that back; it is not strong enough. 
This day has been as long as the entire Chris- 
tian Era. 

Four p. m. Gerbeaux, who was allowed 
to go out foraging, under escort of a guard, 
has returned with a rope of dried onions; 
a can of alphabet noodles; half a pound of 
stale, crumbly macaroons; a few fresh string 
beans; a pot of strained honey, and several 
clean collars of assorted sizes. The woman 
of the house is now making soup for us out 
of the beans, the onions and the noodles. 
She has also produced a little grated Par- 
mesan cheese from somewhere. 

Four-twenty p. m. That was the best soup 
I ever tasted, even if it was full of typo- 
graphical errors from the jumbling together 
of the little alphabet noodles. Still, nobody 
but a proofreader could have found fault 
with that. There was only one trouble with 
that soup : there was not enough of it — just 
one bowl apiece. I would have traded the 
finest case of vintage wine in the Chimay 
vaults for another bowl. 
[133] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



Just as the woman brought in the soup 
Mittendorfer appeared, escorting a French 
lieutenant who was taken prisoner this morn- 
ing. The prisoner was a little, handsome, 
dapper chap not over twenty-two years old, 
wearing his trim blue-and-red uniform with 
an air, even though he himself looked thor- 
oughly miserable. We were warned not to 
speak with him, or he with us; but Gerbeaux, 
after listening to him exchanging a few words 
with the lieutenant, said he judged from his 
accent that the little officer was from the 
south of France. 

We silently offered him a bowl of the soup 
as he sat in a corner fenced off from the rest 
of us by a small table; but he barely tasted 
it, and after a bit he lay down in his corner, 
with his arm for a pillow, and almost in- 
stantly was asleep, breathing heavily, like a 
man on the verge of exhaustion. A few min- 
utes later we heard, from Sergeant Rosenthal, 
that the prisoner's brother-in-law had been 
killed the day before, and that he — the little 
officer — had seen the brother-in-law fall. 

Five p. m. We have had good news — two 
chunks of good news, in fact. We are to 
dine and we are to travel. The sergeant has 
acquired, from unknown sources, a brace of 
small, skinny, fresh-killed pullets; eight fresh 
eggs; a big loaf of the soggy rye bread of the 
field mess; and wine unlimited. Also, we are 
told that at nine o'clock we are to start for 
[1341 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



Brussels — not by automobile, but aboard a 
train carrying wounded and prisoners north- 
ward. 

Everybody cheers up, especially after ma- 
dame promises to have the fowls and the eggs 
ready in less than an hour. 

The Belgian photographer, who, it de- 
velops, is to go with our troop, has been 
brought in from the guardhouse and placed 
with us. With the passing hours his fright 
has increased. Gerbeaux says the poor devil 
is one of the leading photographers of Brus- 
sels — that by royal appointment he takes 
pictures of the queen and her children. But 
the queen would have trouble in recognizing 
her photographer if she could see him now — 
with straw in his tousled hair, and his jaw 
lolling under the weight of his terror, and 
his big, wild eyes staring this way and that. 
Nothing that Gerbeaux can say to him will 
dissuade him from the belief that the Ger- 
mans mean to shoot him. 

I almost forgot to detail a thing that oc- 
curred a few minutes ago, just before the 
Belgian joined us. Mittendorfer brought a 
message for the little French lieutenant. The 
Frenchman roused up and, after they had 
saluted each other ceremoniously, Mittendorfer 
told him he had come to invite him to dine 
with a mess of German officers across the way, 
in the town hall. 

On the way out he stopped to speak with 
[135] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



Sergeant Rosenthal who, having furnished 
the provender for the forthcoming feast, was 
now waiting to share in it. Using German, 
the lieutenant said : 

"I'm being kept pretty busy. Two citi- 
zens of this town have just been sentenced 
to be shot, and I've orders to go and attend 
to the shooting before it gets too dark for 
the firing squad to see to aim." 

Rosenthal did not ask of what crime the 
condemned two had been convicted. 

"You had charge of another execution this 
morning, didn't you?" he said. 

"Yes," answered the lieutenant; "a couple 
— man and wife. The man was seventy-four 
years old and the woman was seventy-two. 
It was proved against them that they put 
poisoned sugar in the coffee for some of our 
soldiers. You heard about the case, didn't 

you?" 

"I heard something about it," said Rosen- 
thal. 

That was all they said. After three weeks 
of war a tragedy like this has become com- 
monplace, not only to these soldiers but to 
us. Already all of us, combatants and on- 
lookers alike, have seen so many horrors that 
one more produces no shock in our minds. It 
will take a wholesale killing to excite us; 
these minor incidents no longer count with us. 
If I wrote all day I do not believe I could 
make the meaning of war, in its effects on the 
[136] 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



minds of those who view it at close hand, any 
clearer. I shall not try. 

Six-fifteen p. m. We have dined. The 
omelet was a very small omelet, and two 
skinny pullets do not go far among nine 
hungry men; still, we have dined. 

My journal breaks off with this entry. It 
broke off because immediately after dinner 
word came that our train was ready. A few 
minutes before we left the taverne for the 
station, to start on a trip that was to last 
two days instead of three hours, and land 
us not in Brussels, but on German soil in 
Aix-la-Chapelle, two incidents happened which 
afterward, in looking back on the experience, 
I have found most firmly clinched in my 
memory: A German captain came into the 
place to get a drink; he recognized me as an 
American and hailed me, and wanted to know 
my business and whether I could give him 
any news from the outside world. I remarked 
on the perfection of his English. 

"I suppose I come by it naturally," he 
said. "I call myself a German, but I was 
born in Nashville, Tennessee, and partly 
reared in New Jersey, and educated at Prince- 
ton; and at this moment I am a member of 
the New York Cotton Exchange." 

Right after this three Belgian peasants, 
all half-grown boys, were brought in. They 
had run away from their homes at the com- 
ing of the Germans, and for three days had 
[137] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



been hiding in thickets, without food, until 
finally hunger and cold had driven them in. 

All of them were in sorry case and one was 
in collapse. He trembled so his whole body 
shook like jelly. The landlady gave him 
some brandy, but the burning stuff choked 
his throat until it closed and the brandy ran 
out of his quivering blue lips and spilled on 
his chin. Seeing this, a husky German private, 
who looked as though in private life he might 
be a piano mover, brought out of his blanket 
roll a bottle of white wine and, holding the 
scared, exhausted lad against his chest, min- 
istered to him with all gentleness, and gave 
him sips of the wine. In the line of duty I 
suppose he would have shot that boy with 
the same cheerful readiness. 

Just as we were filing out into the dark, 
Sergeant Rosenthal, who was also going along, 
halted us and reminded us all and severally 
that we were not prisoners, but still guests; 
and that, though we were to march with the 
prisoners to the station, we were to go in line 
with the guards; and if any prisoner sought 
to escape it was hoped that we would aid in 
recapturing the runaway. So we promised 
him, each on his word of honor, that we would 
do this; and he insisted that we should shake 
hands with him as a pledge and as a token 
of mutual confidence, which we accordingly 
did. Altogether it was quite an impressive little 
ceremonial — and rather dramatic, I imagine. 
[138] 



GUEST OF THE KAISER 



As he left us, however, he was heard, speak- 
ing in German, to say sotto voce to one of the 
guards : 

"If one of those journalists tries to slip 
away don't take any chances — shoot him at 



once 



It is so easy to keep one's honor intact 
when you have moral support in the shape of 
an earnest-minded German soldier, with a gun, 
stepping along six feet behind you. My honor 
was never safer. 



[1391 



CHAPTER VI 
WITH THE GERMAN WRECKING CREW 



WHEN we came out of the little 
taverne at Beaumont, to start — as 
we fondly supposed — for Brussels, 
it was pitch dark in the square of 
the forlorn little town. With us the polite 
and pleasant fiction that we were guests of 
the German authorities had already worn 
seedy, not to say threadbare, but Lieutenant 
Mittendorfer persisted in keeping the little 
romance alive. For, as you remember, we had 
been requested — requested, mind you, and not 
ordered — to march to the station with the 
armed escort that would be in charge of the 
prisoners of war, and it had been impressed 
upon us that we were to assist in guarding 
the convoy, although no one of us had any 
more deadly weapon in his possession than a 
fountain pen; and finally, according to our in- 
structions, if any prisoner attempted to escape 
in the dark we were to lay detaining hands 
upon him and hold him fast. 
[140] 



THE GERMAN WRECKING CREW 

This was all very flattering and very in- 
dicative of the esteem in which the military 
authorities of Beaumont seemed to hold us. 
But we were not puffed up with a sense of 
our new responsibilities. Also we were as a 
unit in agreeing that under no provocation 
would we yield to temptations to embark on 
any side-excursions upon the way to the rail- 
road. Personally I know that I was particular- 
ly firm upon this point. I would defy that 
column to move so fast that I could not keep 
up with it. 

In the black gloom we could make out a 
longish clump of men who stood four abreast, 
scuffling their feet upon the miry wet stones 
of the square. These were the prisoners — 
one hundred and fifty Frenchmen and Turcos, 
eighty Englishmen and eight Belgians. From 
them, as we drew near, an odor of wet, un- 
washed animals arose. It was as rank and raw 
as fumes from crude ammonia. Then, in the 
town house of the Prince de Caraman-Chimay 
just alongside, the double doors opened, and 
the light streaming out fell upon the naked 
bayonets over the shoulders of the sentries and 
made them look like slanting lines of rain. 

There were eight of us by now in the party 
of guests, our original group of five having 
been swollen by the addition of three others — 
the Frenchman Gerbeaux, the American artist 
Stevens and the Belgian court-photographer 
Hennebert, who had been under arrest for 
[141J 



PATHS OF GLORY 



five days. We eight, obeying instructions — 
no, requests — found places for ourselves in the 
double files of guards, four going one side of 
the column and four the other. I slipped 
into a gap on the left flank, alongside four of 
the English soldiers. The guard immediately 
behind me was a man I knew. He had been 
on duty the afternoon previous in the place 
where we were being kept, and he had been 
obliging enough to let me exercise my few 
words of German upon him. * He grinned now 
in recognition and humorously patted the 
stock of his rifle — this last, I take it, being his 
effort to convey to my understanding that he 
was under orders to shoot me in the event of 
my seeking to play truant during the next 
hour or so. He didn't know me — wild horses 
could not have dragged us apart. 

A considerable wait ensued. Officers, com- 
ing back from the day's battle lines in auto- 
mobiles, jumped out of their cars and pressed 
up, bedraggled and wet through from the rain 
which had been falling, to have a look at the 
prisoners. Common soldiers appeared also. 
Of these latter many, I judged, had newly 
arrived at the front and had never seen any 
captured enemies before. They were particu- 
larly interested in the Englishmen, who as 
nearly as I could tell endured the scrutinizing 
pretty well, whereas the Frenchmen grew un- 
easy and self-conscious under it. We who 
were in civilian dress — and pretty shabby 
[142] . 



THE GERMAN WRECKING CREW 



civilian dress at that — came in for our share 
of examination too. The sentries were kept 
busy explaining to newcomers that we were 
not spies going north for trial. There was 
little or no jeering at the prisoners. 

Lieutenant Mittendorfer appeared to feel 
the burden of his authority mightily. His 
importance expressed itself in many bellow- 
ing commands to his men. As he passed the 
door of headquarters, booming like a Prussian 
night-bittern, one of the officers there checked 
him with a gesture. 

"Why all the noise, Herr Lieutenant?" he 
said pleasantly in German. "Cannot this 
thing be done more quietly?" 

The young man took the hint, and when he 
climbed upon a bench outside the wine-shop 
door his voice was much milder as he admon- 
ished the prisoners that they would be treated 
with due honors of war if they obeyed their 
warders promptly during the coming journey, 
but that the least sign of rebellion among them 
would mean but one thing— immediate death. 
Since he spoke in German, a young French 
lieutenant translated the warning for the 
benefit of the Frenchmen and the Belgians, 
and a British noncom. did the same for his 
fellow countrymen, speaking with a strong 
Scottish burr. He wound up with an im- 
provisation of his own, which I thought was 
typically British. "Now, then, boys," he 
sang out, "buck up, all of you! It might be 
[143] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



worse, you know, and some of these German 
chaps don't seem a bad lot at all." 

So, with, that, Lieutenant Mittendorfer blew 
out his big chest and barked an order into the 
night, and away we all swung off at a double 
quick, with our feet slipping and sliding upon 
the travel-worn granite boulders underfoot. 
In addition to being rounded and unevenly 
laid, the stones were now coated with a layer 
of slimy mud. It was a hard job to stay up- 
right on them. 

I don't think I shall ever forget that march. 
I know I shall never forget that smell, or the 
sound of all our feet clumping over those 
slick cobbles. Nor shall I forget, either, the 
appealing calls of Gerbeaux' black chauffeur, 
who was being left behind in the now empty 
guardhouse, and who, to judge from his tones, 
did not expect ever to see any of us again. 
As a matter of fact, I ran across him two weeks 
later in Liege. He had just been released and 
was trying to make his way back to Brussels. 

The way ahead of us was inky black. The 
outlines of the tall Belgian houses on either 
side of the narrow street were barely visible, 
for there were no lights in the windows at all 
and only dim candles or oil lamps in the 
lower floors. No natives showed themselves. 
I do not recollect that in all that mile-long 
tramp I saw a single Belgian civilian — only 
soldiers, shoving forward curiously as we passed 
and pressing the files closer in together. 
[144] 



THE GERMAN WRECKING CREW 

Through one street we went and into another 
which if anything was even narrower and 
blacker than the first, and presently we could 
tell by the feel of things under our feet that 
we had quit the paved road and were traversing 
soft earth. We entered railway sidings, stum- 
bling over the tracks, and at the far end of the 
yard emerged into a sudden glare of brightness 
and drew up alongside a string of cars. 

After the darkness the flaring brilliancy 
made us blink and then it made us wonder 
there should be any lights at all, seeing that 
the French troops, in retiring from Beaumont 
four days before, had done their hurried best 
to cripple the transportation facilities and had 
certainly put the local gas plant out of com- 
mission. Yet here was illumination in plenty 
and to spare. At once the phenomenon stood 
explained. Two days after securing this end 
of the line the German engineers had repaired 
the torn-up right-of-way and installed a com- 
plete acetylene outfit, and already they were 
dispatching trains of troops and munitions 
clear across southeastern Belgium to and from 
the German frontier. When we heard this we 
quit marveling. We had by now ceased to 
wonder at the lightning rapidity and un- 
human efficiency of the German military system 
in the field. 

Under the sizzling acetylene torches we had 
our first good look at these prospective fellow- 
travelers of ours who were avowedly prisoners. 
[145] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



Considered in the aggregate they were not an 
inspiring spectacle. A soldier, stripped of his 
arms and held by his foes, becomes of a sudden 
a pitiable, almost a contemptible object. You 
think instinctively of an adder that has lost 
its fangs, or of a wild cat that, being shorn of 
teeth to bite with and claws to tear with, is 
now a more helpless, more impotent thing 
than if it had been created without teeth and 
claws in the first place. These similes are poor 
ones, I'm afraid, but I find it difficult to put 
my thoughts exactly into words. 

These particular soldiers were most unhappy 
looking, all except the half dozen Turcos 
among the Frenchmen. They spraddled their 
baggy white legs and grinned comfortably, 
baring fine double rows of ivory in their 
brown faces. The others mainly were droopy 
figures of misery and shame. By reason of 
their hair, which they wore long and which 
now hung down in their eyes, and by reason 
also of their ridiculous loose red trousers and 
their long-tailed awkward blue coats, the 
Frenchmen showed themselves especially un- 
kempt and frowzy-looking. Almost to a man 
they were dark, lean, slouchy fellows; they were 
from the south of France, we judged. Cer- 
tainly with a week's growth of black whiskers 
upon their jaws they were fit now to play 
stage brigands without further make-up. 

"Wot a bloomin', stinkin', rotten country!" 
came, two rows back from where I stood, a 
[146] 



THE GERMAN WRECKING CREW 

Cockney voice uplifted to the leaky skies. 
"There ain't nothin' to eat in it, and there 
ain't nothin' to drink in it, too." 

A little whiny man alongside of me, whose 
chin was on his breast bone, spake downward 
along his gray flannel shirt bosom: 

"Just wyte," he said; "just wyte till Eng- 
land 'ears wot they done to us, 'erdin' us 
about like cattle. Blighters!" He spat his 
disgust upon the ground. 

We spoke to none of them directly, nor they 
to us — that also being a condition imposed by 
Mittendorfer. 

The train was composed of several small 
box cars and one second-class passenger coach 
of German manufacture with a dumpy little 
locomotive at either end, one to pull and one 
to push. In profile it would have reminded 
you somewhat of the wrecking trains that go 
to disasters in America. The prisoners were 
loaded aboard the box cars like so many 
sheep, with alert gray shepherds behind them, 
carrying guns in lieu of crooks; and, being 
entrained, they were bedded down for the night 
upon straw. 

The civilians composing our party were 
bidden to climb aboard the passenger coach, 
where the eight of us, two of the number 
being of augmented superadult size, took pos- 
session of a compartment meant to hold six. 
The other compartments were occupied by 
wounded Germans, except one compartment, 
[147] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



which was set aside for the captive French 
lieutenant and two British subalterns. Top- 
Sergeant Rosenthal was in charge of the train 
with headquarters aboard our coach. With 
him, as aides, he had three Red Cross men. 

The lighting apparatus of the car did not 
operate. On the ledge of our window sat 
a small oil lamp, sending out a rich smell 
and a pale, puny illumination. Just before 
we pulled out Rosenthal came and blew out 
the lamp, leaving the wick to smoke abom- 
inably. He explained that he did this for 
our own well-being. Belgian snipers just out- 
side the town had been firing into the passing 
trains, he said, and a light in a car window 
was but an added temptation. He advised 
us that if shooting started we should drop upon 
the floor. We assured him in chorus that we 
would, and then after adding that we must 
not be surprised if the Belgians derailed the 
train during the night he went away, leaving 
us packed snugly in together in the dark. 
This incident had a tendency to discourage light 
conversation among us for some minutes. 

Possibly it was because daylight travel would 
be safer travel, or it may have been for some 
other good and sufficient reason, that after 
traveling some six or eight miles joltingly we 
stopped in the edge of a small village and stayed 
there until after sun-up. That was a hard 
night for sleeping purposes. One of our party, 
who was a small man, climbed up into the 
[148] 



THE GERMAN WRECKING CREW 



net above one row of seats and 
stretched himself stiffly in the narrow ham- 
mocklike arrangement, fearing to move lest 
he tumble down on the heads of his fellow- 
sufferers. Another laid him down in the little 
aisle flanking the compartment, where at least 
he might spraddle his limbs and where also, 
persons passing the length of the car stepped 
upon his face and figure from time to time. 
This interfered with his rest. The remaining 
six of us mortised ourselves into the seats in 
neck-cricking attitudes, with our legs so inter- 
twined and mingled that when one man got 
up to stretch himself he had to use great care 
in picking out his own legs. Sometimes he 
could only tell that it was his leg by pinching 
it. This was especially so after inaction had 
put his extremities to sleep while the rest of 
him remained wide awake. 

After dawn we ran slowly to Charleroi, the 
center of the Belgian iron industry, in a sterile 
land of mines and smelters and slag-heaps, and 
bleak, bare, ore-stained hillsides. The Ger- 
mans had fought here, first with organized 
troops of the Allies, and later, by their own 
telling, with bushwhacking civilians. Whole 
rows of houses upon either side of the track 
had been ventilated by shells or burned out 
with fire, and their gable ends, lacking roofs, 
now stood up nakedly, fretting the skyline 
like gigantic saw teeth. As we were drawing 
out from between these twin rows of ruins 
[149] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



we saw a German sergeant in a flower plot 
alongside a wrecked cottage bending over, 
apparently smelling at a clump of tall red 
geraniums. That he could find time in the 
midst of that hideous desolation to sniff at 
the posies struck us as a typically German bit 
of sentimentalism. Just then, though, he 
stood erect and we were better informed. He 
had been talking over a military telephone, the 
wires of which were buried underground with 
a concealed transmitter snuggling beneath the 
geraniums. The flowers even were being made 
to contribute their help in forwarding the 
mechanism of war. I think, though, that it 
took a composite German mind to evolve that 
expedient. A Prussian would bring along the 
telephone; a Saxon would bed it among the 
blossoms. 

We progressed onward by a process of 
alternate stops and starts, through a land 
bearing remarkably few traces to show for 
its recent chastening with sword and torch, 
until in the middle of the blazing hot fore- 
noon we came to Gembloux, which I think 
must be the place where all the flies in Bel- 
gium are spawned. Here on a siding we lay 
all day, grilled in the heat and pestered by 
swarms of the buzzing scavenger vermin, while 
troop trains without number passed us, hurry- 
ing along the sentry-guarded railway to the 
lower frontiers of Belgium. Every box-car 
door made a frame for a group-picture of 
[150] 



THE GERMAN WRECKING CREW 

broad German faces and bulky German bodies. 
Upon nearly every car the sportive passengers 
had lashed limbs of trees and big clumps of 
field flowers. Also with colored chalks they 
had extensively frescoed the wooden walls as 
high up as they could reach. The commonest 
legend was "On to Paris," or for variety "To 
Paris Direct," but occasionally a lighter touch 
showed itself. For example, one wag had in- 
scribed on a car door: "Declarations of War 
Received Here," and another had drawn a 
highly impressionistic likeness of his Kaiser, 
and under it had inscribed "Wilhelm II, 
Emperor of Europe." 

Presently as train after train, loaded some- 
times with guns or supplies but usually with 
men, clanked by, it began to dawn upon us 
that these soldiers were of a different physical 
type from the soldiers we had seen heretofore. 
They were all Germans, to be sure, but the 
men along the front were younger men, hard- 
bitten and trained down, with the face which 
we had begun to call the Teutonic fighting 
face, whereas these men were older, and of a 
heavier port and fuller fashion of countenance. 
Also some of them wore blue coats, red- 
trimmed, instead of the dull gray service 
garb of the troops in the first invading columns. 
Indeed some of them even wore a nondescript 
mixture of uniform and civilian garb. They 
were Landwehr and Landsturm, troops of the 
third and fourth lines, going now to police 
[151] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



the roads and garrison the captured towns, 
and hold the lines of communication open 
while the first line, who were picked troops, 
and the second line, who were reservists, 
pressed ahead into France. 

They showed a childlike curiosity to see 
the prisoners in the box cars behind us. They 
grinned triumphantly at the Frenchmen and 
the Britishers, but the sight of a Turco in his 
short jacket and his dirty white skirts in- 
variably set them off in derisive cat-calling 
and whooping. One beefy cavalryman in his 
forties, who looked the Bavarian peasant all 
over, boarded our car to see what might be 
seen. He had been drinking. He came 
nearer being drunk outright than any German 
soldier I had seen to date. Because he heard 
us talking English he insisted on regarding us 
as English spies. 

"Hark! they betray themselves," we heard 
him mutter thickly to one of his wounded 
countrymen in the next compartment. "They 
are damned Englishers." 

66 Nein! Nein! All Americans," we heard 
the other say. 

"Well, if they are Americans, why don't 
they talk the American language then?" he 
demanded. Hearing this, I was sorry I had 
neglected in my youth to learn Choctaw. 

Still dubious of us, he came now and stood 
in the aisle, rocking slightly on his bolster 
legs and eying us glassily. Eventually a 

[152] 



THE GERMAN WRECKING CREW 

thought pierced the fog of his understanding. 
He hauled his saber out of its scabbard and 
invited us to run our fingers along the edge 
and see how keen and sharp it was. He added, 
with appropriate gestures, that he had 
honed it with the particular intent of slic- 
ing off a few English heads. For one, and 
speaking for one only, I may say I was, on 
the whole, rather glad when he departed from 
among us. 

When we grew tired of watching the troop 
trains streaming south we fought the flies, and 
listened for perhaps the tenth time to the 
story of Stevens' experience when he first fell 
into German hands, six days before. 

Stevens was the young American who ac- 
companied Gerbeaux, the Frenchman, and Hen- 
nebert, the Belgian, on their ill-timed expedition 
from Brussels in an automobile bearing with- 
out authority a Red Cross flag. Gerbeaux 
was out to get a story for the Chicago paper 
which he served as Brussels correspondent, 
and the Belgian hoped to take some photo- 
graphs; but a pure love of excitement brought 
Stevens along. He had his passport to prove 
his citizenship and a pass from General von 
Jarotzky, military commandant of Brussels, 
authorizing him to pass through the lines. 
He thought he was perfectly safe. 

When their machine was halted by the 
Germans a short distance south and west of 
Waterloo, Stevens, for some reason which he 

[153] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



could never understand, was separated from 
his two companions and the South-African 
negro chauffeur. A sergeant took him in 
charge, and all the rest of the day he rode 
on the tail of a baggage wagon with a guard 
upon either side of him. First, though, he 
was searched and all his papers were taken 
from him. 

Late in the afternoon the pack-train halted 
and as Stevens was stretching his legs in a 
field a first lieutenant, whom he described as 
being tall and nervous and highly excitable, 
ran up and, after berating the two guards for 
not having their rifles ready to fire, he poked 
a gun under Stevens' nose and went through 
the process of loading it, meanwhile telling 
him that if he moved an inch his brains would 
be blown out. A sergeant gently edged Stevens 
back out of the danger belt, and, from behind 
the officer's back another man, so Stevens 
said, tapped himself gently upon the forehead 
to indicate that the Herr Lieutenant was 
cracked in the brain. 

After this Stevens was taken into an im- 
provised barracks in a deserted Belgian gen- 
darmerie and locked in a room. At nine 
o'clock the lieutenant came to him and told 
him in a mixture of French and German 
that he had by a court-martial been found 
guilty of being an English spy and that at 
six o'clock the following morning he would 
be shot. "When you hear a bugle sound you 

[154] 



THE GERMAN WRECKING CREW 

may know that is the signal for your execu- 
tion," the officer added. 

While poor Stevens was still begging for 
an opportunity to be heard in his own de- 
fense the lieutenant dealt him a blow in the 
side which left him temporarily breathless. 
In a moment two soldiers had crossed his 
wrists behind his back and were lashing them 
tightly together with a rope. 

Thus bound he was taken back indoors 
and made to sit on a bench. Eight soldiers 
stretched themselves upon the floor of the 
room and slept there; a sergeant slept with 
his body across the door. A guard sat on the 
bench beside Stevens. 

"He gave me two big slugs of brandy to 
drink," said Stevens, continuing his tale," and 
it affected me no more than so much water. 
After a couple of hours I managed to work 
the cords loose and I got one hand free. Mov- 
ing cautiously I lifted my feet, and by stretch- 
ing my arms cautiously down, still holding 
them behind my back, I untied one shoe. 
I meant at the last to kick off my shoes and 
run for it. I was feeling for the laces on my 
other shoe when another guard came to re- 
enforce the first, and he watched me so closely 
that I knew that chance was gone. 

"After a while, strange as it seems, all the 
fear and all the horror of death left me. My 
chief regret now was, not that I had to die, 
but that my people at home would never 

[155] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



know how I died or where. I put my head 
down on the table and actually dozed off. 
But there was a clock in the room and when- 
ever it struck I would rouse up and say to 
myself, almost impersonally, that I now had 
four hours to live, or three, or two, as the 
case might be. Then I would go to sleep 
again. Once or twice a queer sinking sensa- 
tion in my stomach, such as I never felt be- 
fore, would come to me, but toward daylight 
this ceased to occur. 

"At half -past five two soldiers, one carrying 
a spade and the other a lantern, came in. 
They lit the lantern at a lamp that burned 
on a table in front of me and went out. Pres- 
ently I could hear them digging in the yard 
outside the door. I believed it was my grave 
they were digging. I cannot recall that this 
made any particular impression upon me. I 
considered it in a most casual sort of fashion. 
I remember wondering whether it was a deep 
grave. 

"At five minutes before six a bugle sounded. 
The eight men on the floor got up, buckled 
on their cartridge belts, shouldered their rifles 
and, leaving their knapsacks behind, tramped 
out. I followed with my guards upon either 
side of me. My one fear now was that I 
should tremble at the end. I felt no fear, but 
I was afraid my knees would shake. I remem- 
ber how relieved I was when I took the first 
step to find my legs did not tremble under me. 
[156] 



THE GERMAN WRECKING CREW 

I was resolved, too, that I would not be shot 
down with my hands tied behind me. When 
I faced the squad I meant to shake off the 
ropes on my wrists and take the volley with 
my arms at my sides." 

Stevens was marched to the center of the 
courtyard. Then, without a word of explana- 
tion to him his bonds were removed and he 
was put in an automobile and carried off to 
rejoin the other members of the unlucky sight- 
seeing party. He never did find out whether 
he had been made the butt of a hideous prac- 
tical joke by a half-mad brute or whether 
his tormentor really meant to send him to 
death and was deterred at the last moment 
by fear of the consequences. One thing he 
did learn — there had been no court-martial. 
Thereafter, during his captivity, Stevens was 
treated with the utmost kindness by all the 
officers with whom he came in contact. His 
was the only instance that I have knowledge 
of where a prisoner has been tortured, physi- 
cally or mentally, by a German. It was curious 
that in this one case the victim should have 
been an American citizen whose intentions 
were perfectly innocent and whose papers were 
orthodox and unquestionable. 

Glancing back over what I have here writ- 
ten down I find I have failed altogether to 
mention the food which we ate on that trip 
of ours with the German wrecking crew. It 
was hardly worth mentioning, it was so scanty. 
[157] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



We had to eat, during that day while we lay 
at Gembloux, a loaf of the sourish soldiers' 
black bread, with green mold upon the crust, 
and a pot of rancid honey which one of the 
party had bethought him to bring from Beau- 
mont in his pocket. To wash this mixture down 
we had a few swigs of miserably bad lukewarm 
ration-coffee from a private's canteen, a bottle 
of confiscated Belgian mineral water, which a 
private at Charleroi gave us from his store, and 
a precious quart of the Prince de Caraman- 
Chimay's commandeered wine — also a souvenir 
of our captivity. Late in the afternoon a 
sergeant sold us for a five-mark piece a big 
skin-casing filled with half -raw pork sausage. 
I've never tasted anything better. 

Even so, we fared better than the prisoners 
in the box cars behind and the dozen wounded 
men in the coach with us. They had only 
coffee and dry bread and, at the latter end of 
the long day, a few chunks of the sausage. 
Some of the wounded men were pretty badly 
hurt, too. There was one whose left forearm 
had been half shot away. His stiff fingers 
protruded beyond his soiled bandages and they 
were still crusted with dried blood and grained 
with dirt. Another had been pierced through 
the jaw with a bullet. That part of his face 
which showed through the swathings about 
his head was terribly swollen and purple with 
congested blood. The others had flesh wounds, 
mainly in their sides or their legs. Some of 
[158] 



THE GERMAN WRECKING CREW 

them were feverish; all of them sorely needed 
clean garments for their bodies and fresh dress- 
ings for their hurts and proper food for their 
stomachs. Yet I did not hear one of them 
complain or groan. With that oxlike patience 
of the North-European peasant breed, which 
seems accentuated in these Germans in time 
of war, they quietly endured what was acute 
discomfort for any sound man to have to en- 
dure. In some dim, dumb fashion of their own 
they seemed, each one of them, to comprehend 
that in the vast organism of an army at war 
the individual unit does not count. To him- 
self he may be of prime importance and first 
consideration, but in the general carrying out 
of the scheme he is a mote, a molecule, a spore, 
a protoplasm — an infinitesimal, utterly incon- 
sequential thing to be sacrificed without 
thought. Thus we diagnosed their mental poses. 
Along toward five o'clock a goodish string 
of cars was added to our train, and into these 
additional cars seven hundred French soldiers, 
who had been collected at Gembloux, were 
loaded. With the Frenchmen as they marched 
under our window went, perhaps, twenty 
civilian prisoners, including two priests and 
three or four subdued little men who looked 
as though they might be civic dignitaries of 
some small Belgian town. In the squad was 
one big, broad-shouldered peasant in a blouse, 
whose arms were roped back at the elbows 
with a thick cord. 

1159] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



"Do you see that man?" said one of our 
guards excitedly, and he pointed at the pin- 
ioned man. "He is a grave robber. He has 
been digging up dead Germans to rob the 
bodies. They tell me that when they caught 
him he had in his pockets ten dead men's 
fingers which he had cut off with a knife be- 
cause the flesh was so swollen he could not 
slip the rings off. He will be shot, that fellow." 

We looked with a deeper interest then at 
the man whose arms were bound, but privately 
we permitted ourselves to be skeptical regard- 
ing the details of his alleged ghoulishness. We 
had begun to discount German stories of 
Belgian atrocities and Belgian stories of German 
atrocities. I might add that I am still discount- 
ing both varieties. 

To help along our train two more little en- 
gines were added, but even with four of them 
to draw and to shove their load was now so 
heavy that we were jerked along with sensa- 
tions as though we were having a jaw tooth 
pulled every few seconds. After such a fashion 
we progressed very slowly. Already we knew 
that we were not going to Brussels, as we had 
been promised in Beaumont that we should go. 
We only hoped we were not bound for a Ger- 
man military fortress in some interior city. 

It fell to my lot that second night to sleep 
in the aisle. In spite of being walked on at 
intervals I slept pretty well. When I waked it 
was three o'clock in the morning, just, and we 

[160] 



THE GERMAN WRECKING CREW 



were standing in the train shed at Liege, and 
hospital corps men were coming aboard with 
hot coffee and more raw sausages for the 
wounded. Among the Germans, sausages are 
used medicinally. I think they must keep 
supplies of sausages in their homes, for use in 
cases of accident and sickness. 

I got up and looked from the window. 
The station was full of soldiers moving about 
on various errands. Overhead big arc lights 
sputtered spitefully, so that the place was 
almost as bright as day. Almost directly 
below me was a big table, which stood on the 
platform and was covered over with papers 
and maps. At the table sat two officers — high 
officers, I judged — writing busily. Their stiff 
white cuff-ends showed below their coat- 
sleeves; their slim black boots were highly 
polished, and altogether they had the look of 
having just escaped from the hands of a valet. 
Between them and the frowsy privates was a 
gulf a thousand miles wide and a thousand 
miles deep. 

When I woke again it was broad daylight 
and we had crossed the border and were in 
Germany. At small way stations women and 
girls wearing long white aprons and hospital 
badges came under the car windows with hot 
drinks and bacon sandwiches for the wounded. 
They gave us some, too, and, I think, bestowed 
what was left upon the prisoners at the rear. 
We ran now through a land untouched by war, 

[161] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



where prim farmhouses stood in prim gardens. 
It was Sunday morning and the people were 
going to church dressed in their Sunday best. 
Considering that Germany was supposed to 
have been drained of its able-bodied male 
adults for war-making purposes we saw, among 
the groups, an astonishingly large number of 
men of military age. By contrast with the 
harried country from which we had just 
emerged this seemed a small Paradise of peace. 
Over there in Belgium all the conditions of 
life had been disorganized and undone, where 
they had not been wrecked outright. Over 
here in Germany the calm was entirely un- 
ruffled. 

It shamed us to come as we were into such 
surroundings. For our car was littered with 
sausage skins and bread crusts, and filth less 
pleasant to look at and stenches of many sorts 
abounded. Indeed I shall go further and say 
that it stank most fearsomely. As for us, we 
felt ourselves to be infamous offenses against 
the bright, clean day. We had not slept in a 
bed for five nights or had our clothes off for 
that time. For three days none of us had eaten 
a real meal at a regular table. For two days 
we had not washed our faces and hands. 

The prisoners of war went on to Cologne 
to be put in a laager, but we were bidden to 
detrain at Aix-la-Chapelle. We climbed off, a 
dirty, wrinkled, unshaven troop of vagabonds, 
to find ourselves free to go where we pleased. 
[162] 



THE GERMAN WRECKING CREW 

That is, we thought so at first. But by evening 
the Frenchman and the Belgians had been 
taken away to be held in prison until the end 
of the war, and for two days the highly efficient 
local secret-service staff kept the rest of us 
under its watchful care. After that, though, 
the American consul, Robert J. Thompson, 
succeeded in convincing the military authori- 
ties that we were not dangerous. 

I still think that taking copious baths and 
getting ourselves shaved helped to clear us of 
suspicion. 



[163] 



CHAPTER VII 
THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



THERE is a corner of Rhenish Prussia 
that shoulders up against Holland and 
drives a nudging elbow deep into the 
ribs of Belgium; and right here, at the 
place where the three countries meet, stands 
Charlemagne's ancient city of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
called Aachen by the Germans. 

To go from the middle of Aix-la-Chapelle to 
the Dutch boundary takes twenty minutes 
on a tram-car, and to go to the Belgian line 
requires an even hour in a horse-drawn vehicle, 
and considerably less than that presuming you 
go by automobile. So you see the toes of the 
town touch two foreign frontiers; and of all 
German cities it is the most westerly and, 
therefore, closest of all to the zone of action 
in the west of Europe. 

You would never guess it, however. When 
we landed in Aix-la-Chapelle, coming out of 
the heart of the late August hostilities in 
[164] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



Belgium, we marveled; for, behold, here was 
a clean, white city that, so far as the look of 
it and the feel of it went, might have been a 
thousand miles from the sound of gunfire. 
On that Sabbath morning of our arrival an 
air of everlasting peace abode with it. That 
same air of peace continued to abide with it 
during all the days we spent here. Yet, if 
you took a step to the southwest — a figurative 
step in seven-league boots — you were where 
all hell broke loose. War is a most tremendous 
emphasizer of contrasts. 

These lines were written late in September, 
in a hotel room at Aix-la-Chapelle. The writ- 
ing of them followed close on an automobile 
trip to Liege, through a district blasted by war 
and corrugated with long trenches where those 
who died with their boots on still lie with their 
boots on. 

Let me, if I can, draw two pictures — one 
of this German outpost town, and the other 
of the things that might be seen four or five 
miles distant over the border. 

I have been told that, in the first flurry 
of the breaking out of the World- War, Aix 
was not placid. It went spy-mad, just as all 
Europe went spy-mad — a mania from which 
this Continent has not entirely recovered by 
any means. There was a great rounding up 
of suspected aliens. Every loyal citizen re- 
solved himself or herself into a self-appointed 
policeman, to watch the movements of those 
[165] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



suspected of being disloyal. Also, they tell 
me, when the magic mobilization began and 
troops poured through without ceasing for 
four days and four nights, and fighting broke 
out just the other side of the Belgian custom- 
house, on the main high road to Liege, there 
was excitement. But all that was over long 
before we came. 

The war has gone onward, down into France; 
and all the people know is what the official 
bulletins tell them; in fact, I think they must 
know less about operations and results than 
our own people in America. I know not what 
the opportunity of the spectator may have been 
with regard to other wars, but certainly in 
this war it is true that the nearer you get to 
it the less you understand of its scope. 

All about you, on every side, is a screen of 
secrecy. Once in a while it parts for a moment, 
and through the rift you catch a glimpse of the 
movement of armies and the swing and sweep 
of campaigns. Then the curtain closes and 
again you are shut in. 

Let me put the case in another way: It is 
as though we who are at the front, or close 
to it, stand before a mighty painting, but with 
our noses almost touching the canvas. You 
who are farther away see the whole picture. 
We, for the moment, see only so much of it 
as you might cover with your two hands; 
but this advantage we do have — that we see 
the brush strokes, the color shadings, the in- 
[166] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



finite small detail, whereas you view its wider 
effects. 

And then, having seen it, when we try to 
put our story into words — when we try to 
set down on paper the unspeakable horror of 
it — we realize what a futile, incomplete thing 
the English language is. 

This present day in Aix-la-Chapelle will be, 
I assume, much like all the other days I have 
spent here. An hour ago small official bulletins, 
sanctioned by the Berlin War Office, were posted 
in the windows of the shops and on the front 
of the public buildings; and small groups gath- 
ered before them to read the news. 

If it was good news they took it calmly. 
If it was not so good, still they took it calmly. 
If it was outright bad news I think they 
would still take it calmly. For, come good or 
evil, they are all possessed now with the belief 
that, in the long run, Germany must win. 
Their confidence is supreme. 

It was characteristic of them, though, that, 
until word came of the first German success, 
there was no general flying of flags in the 
town. Now flags are up everywhere — the colors 
of the Empire and of Prussia, and often enough 
just a huge yellow square bearing the sprad- 
dled, black, spidery design of the Imperial eagle. 
But there is never any hysteria; I don't believe 
these Prussians know the meaning of the word. 

It is safe to assume that out of every three 
grown men in front of a bulletin one will be 
[167] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



a soldier. Yet, considering that Germany is 
supposed, at this moment, to have upward 
of five million men in the field or under arms, 
and that approximately two millions more, 
who were exempt from call by reason of age 
or other disabilities, are said to have volun- 
teered, you would be astonished to see how 
many men in civilian dress are on the streets. 

Whether in uniform or not, though, these 
men are at work after some fashion or other 
for their country. Practically all the physi- 
cians in Aix are serving in the hospitals. The 
rich men — the men of affairs — are acting as 
military clerks at headquarters or driving Red 
Cross cars. The local censor of the telegraph 
is over eighty years old — a splendid-looking 
old white giant, who won the Iron Cross in 
the Franco-Prussian War and retired with the 
rank of general years and years ago. Now, in 
full uniform, he works twelve hard hours a day. 

The head waiter at this hotel told me yes- 
terday that he expected to be summoned to 
the colors in a day or two. He has had his 
notice and is ready to go. He is more than 
forty years old. I know my room waiter kept 
watch on me until he satisfied himself I was 
what I claimed to be — an American — and not 
an English spy posing as an American. 

So, at first, did the cheery little girl cashier 
in the Arcade barber shop downstairs. For 
all I know, she may still have me under sus- 
picion and be making daily reports on me to 
[168] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



the secret-service people. The women help, 
too — and the children. The wives and daugh- 
ters of the wealthiest men in the town are 
minding the sick and the wounded. The 
mothers and the younger girls meet daily to 
make hospital supplies. Women come to you 
in the cafes at night, wearing Red Cross badges 
on their left arms, and shaking sealed tin 
canisters into which you are expected to drop 
contributions for invalided soldiers. 

Since so many of their teachers are carrying 
rifles or wearing swords, the pupils of the gram- 
mar schools and the high schools are being 
organized into squads of crop-gatherers. Be- 
ginning next week, so I hear, they will go out 
into the fields and the orchar4s to assist in the 
harvesting of the grain and the fruit. For 
lack of hands to get it under cover the wheat 
has already begun to suffer; but the boys and 
girls will bring it in. 

It is now half-past eleven o'clock in the 
forenoon. At noon, sharp, an excellent or- 
chestra will begin to play in the big white 
casino maintained by the city, just opposite 
my hotel. It will play for an hour then, and 
again this afternoon, and again, weather per- 
mitting, to-night. 

The townspeople will sit about at small, 
white tables and listen to the music while they 
sip their beer or drink their coffee. They 
will be soberer and less vivacious than I im- 
agine they were two months ago; but then these 
[169] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



North Germans are a sober-minded race any- 
how, and they take their amusements quietly. 
Also, they have taken the bad tidings of the 
last few days from France very quietly. 

During the afternoon crowds will gather 
on the viaduct, just above the principal rail- 
road station, where they will stand for hours 
looking down over the parapet into the yards 
below. There will be smaller crowds on the 
heights of Ronheide, on the edge of the town, 
where the tracks enter the long tunnel under 
one of the hills that etch the boundary between 
Germany and Belgium. 

Rain or shine, these two places are sure to 
be black with people, for here they may see 
the trains shuttle by, like long bobbins in a 
loom that never ceases from its weaving — ■ 
trains going west loaded with soldiers and 
naval reservists bound for the front, and trains 
headed east bearing prisoners and wounded. 
The raw material passes one way — that's the 
new troops; the finished product passes the 
other — the wounded and the sick. 

When wounded men go by there will be 
cheering, and some of the women are sure to 
raise the song of Die Wacht am Rhein; and 
within the cars the crippled soldiers will take 
up the chorus feebly. God knows how many 
able-bodied soldiers already have gone west; 
how many maimed and crippled ones have 
gone east! In the first instance the number 
must run up into the second million; of the 
[170J 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



latter there must have been well above two 
hundred thousand. 

No dead come back from the front — at 
least, not this way. The Germans bury their 
fallen soldiers where they fall. Regardless of 
his rank, the dead man goes into a trench. 
If so be he died in battle he is buried, booted 
and dressed just as he died. And the dead of 
each day must be got underground before 
midnight of that same day — that is the hard- 
and-fast rule wherever the Germans are hold- 
ing their ground or pressing forward. There 
they will lie until the Judgment Day, unless 
their kinsfolk be of sufficient wealth and in- 
fluence to find their burial places and dig them 
up and bring them home privily for interment. 
Even so, it may be days or even weeks after 
a man is dead and buried before his people 
hear of it. It may be they will not hear of 
it until a letter written to him in the care of 
his regiment and his company comes back un- 
opened, with one word in sinister red letters on 
it — Gefallenl 

At this hotel, yesterday, I saw a lady dressed 
in heavy black. She had the saddest, bravest 
face I ever looked into, I think. She sat in 
the restaurant with two other ladies, who were 
also in black. The octogenarian censor of tele- 
grams passed them on the way out. To her 
two companions he bowed deeply, but at her 
side he halted and, bending very low, he kissed 
her hand, and then went away without a word. 
[1711 



PATHS OF GLORY 



The head waiter, who knows all the gossip of 
the house and of half the town besides, told us 
about her. Her only son, a lieutenant of ar- 
tillery, was killed at the taking of Liege. It 
was three days before she learned of his death, 
though she was here in Aachen, only a few 
miles away; for so slowly as this does even 
bad news travel in war times when it pertains 
to the individual. 

Another week elapsed before her husband, 
who is a lieutenant-colonel, could secure leave 
of absence and return from the French border 
to seek for his son's body; and there was still 
another week of searching before they found it. 
It was at the bottom of a trench, under the 
bodies of a score or more of his men; and it 
was in such a state that the mother had not 
been permitted to look on her dead boy's face. 

Such things as this must be common enough 
hereabouts, but one hears very little of them 
and sees even less. Aix-la-Chapelle has suffered 
most heavily. The Aix regiment was shot to 
pieces in the first day's fighting at Liege. 
Nearly half its members were killed or wounded; 
but astonishingly few women in mourning are 
to be seen on the street, and none of the men 
wear those crape arm bands that are so com- 
mon in Europe ordinarily; nor, except about 
the railroad station, are very many wounded 
to be seen. 

There are any number of wounded privates 
in the local hospitals; but there must be a 
[172] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



rule against their appearance in public places, 
for it is only occasionally that I meet one 
abroad. Slightly wounded officers are more 
plentiful. I judge from this that no such re- 
striction applies to them as applies to the 
common soldiers. This hotel is full of them — 
young officers mostly, with their heads tied 
up or their arms in black silk slings, or limping 
about on canes or crutches. 

Until a few days ago the columns of the back 
pages of the Aix and Cologne papers were 
black-edged with cards inserted by relatives 
in memory of officers who had fallen — "For 
King and Fatherland!" the cards always said. 
I counted thirteen of these death notices in 
one issue of a Cologne paper. Now they have 
almost disappeared. I imagine that, because 
of the depressing effect of such a mass of these 
publications on the public mind, the families 
of killed officers have been asked to refrain 
from reciting their losses in print. Yet there 
are not wanting signs that the grim total piles 
up by the hour and the day. 

Late this afternoon, when I walk around to 
the American consulate, I shall pass the office 
of the chief local paper; and there I am sure 
to find anywhere from seventy-five to a hun- 
dred men and women waiting for the appear- 
ance on a bulletin board of the latest list of 
dead, wounded and missing men who are cred- 
ited to Aix-la-Chapelle and its vicinity. A 
new list goes up each afternoon, replacing the 
[173] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



list of the day before. Sometimes it contains 
but a few names; sometimes a good many. 
Then there will be piteous scenes for a little 
while; but presently the mourners will go 
away, struggling to compose themselves as 
they go; for their Kaiser has asked them to 
make no show of their loss among their neigh- 
bors. Having made the supremest sacrifice 
they can make, short of offering up their own 
lives, they now make another and hide their 
grief away from sight. Surely, this war spares 
none at all — neither those who fight nor those 
who stay behind. 

Toward dusk the streets will fill up with 
promenaders. Perhaps a regiment or so of 
troops, temporarily quartered here on the way 
to the front, will clank by, bound for their 
barracks in divers big music halls. The squares 
may be quite crowded with uniforms; or there 
may be only one gray coat in proportion to 
three or four black ones — this last is the com- 
moner ratio. It all depends on the movements 
of the forces. 

To-night the cafes will be open and the 
moving-picture places will run full blast; and 
the free concert will go on and there will be 
services in the cathedral of Charlemagne. 
The cafes that had English names when the 
war began have German ones now. Thus the 
Bristol has become the Crown Prince Cafe, 
and the Piccadilly is the Germania; but other- 
wise they are just as they were before the war 
[174] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



started, and the business in them is quite as 
good, the residents say, as it ever was. Prices 
are no higher than they used to be — at least I 
have not found them high. 

After the German fashion the diners will 
eat slowly and heavily; and afterward they 
will sit in clusters of three or four, drinking 
mugs of Munich or Pilsner, and talking de- 
liberately. At the Crown Prince there will be 
dancing, and at two or three other places there 
will be music and maybe singing; but at the 
Kaiserhof, where I shall dine, there is nothing 
more exciting than beer and conversation. It 
was there, two nights ago, I met at the same 
time three Germans representing three dom- 
inant classes in the life of their country, and 
had from each of them the viewpoint of his 
class toward the war. They were, respectively, 
a business man, a scientist, and a soldier. 
The business man belongs to a firm of brothers 
which ranks almost with the Krupps in com- 
mercial importance. It has branches in many 
cities and agencies and plants in half a dozen 
countries. He said: 

"We had not our daily victory to-day, eh? 
Well, so it goes; we must not expect to win 
always. We must have reverses, and heavy 
ones too; but in the end we must win. To 
lose now would mean national extinction. To 
win means Germany's commercial and military 
preeminence in this hemisphere. 

"There can be but one outcome of this war 
[175] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



— either Germany, as an empire, will cease to 
exist, or she will emerge the greatest Power, 
except the United States, on the face of the 
earth. And so sure are we of the result that 
to-day my brothers and I bought ground for 
doubling the size and capacity of our largest 
plant. 

"In six weeks from now we shall have beaten 
France; in six months we shall have driven 
Russia to cover. For England it will take a 
year — perhaps longer. And then, as in all 
games, big and little, the losers will pay. France 
will be made to pay an indemnity from which 
she will never recover. 

"Of Belgium I think we shall take a slice of 
seacoast; Germany needs ports on the English 
Channel. Russia will be so humbled that no 
longer will the Muscovite peril threaten Europe. 
Great Britain we shall crush utterly. She shall 
be shorn of her navy and she shall lose her 
colonies — certainly she shall lose India and 
Egypt. She will become a third-class Power 
and she will stay a third-class Power. Forget 
Japan — Germany will punish Japan in due 
season. 

"Within five years from now I predict 
there will be an offensive and defensive alliance 
of all the Teutonic and all the Scandinavian 
races of Europe, with Bulgaria included, 
holding absolute dominion over this continent 
and stretching in an unbroken line from the 
North Sea to the Adriatic and the Black Sea. 
[176] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



"Europe is to have a new map, my friends, 
and Germany will be in the middle of that 
map. When this has been accomplished we 
shall talk about disarmament — not before. 
And first, we shall disarm our enemies who 
forced this war on us." 

The scientist spoke next. He is a tall, spec- 
tacled, earnest Westphalian, who has invented 
and patented over a hundred separate devices 
used in electric-lighting properties, and, in 
between, has found time to travel round the 
world several times and write a book or 
two. 

"I do not believe in war," he said. "War 
has no place in the civilization of the world 
to-day; but this war was inevitable. Germany 
had to expand or be suffocated. And out of 
this war good will come for all the world, 
especially for Europe. We Germans are the 
most industrious, the most earnest and the 
best-educated race on this side of the ocean. 
To-day one-fourth of the population of Belgium 
cannot read and write. Under German in- 
fluence illiteracy will disappear from among 
them. Russia stands for reaction; England 
for selfishness and perfidy; France for deca- 
dence. Germany stands for progress. Do not 
believe the claims of our foes that our Kaiser 
wishes to be another Napoleon and hold 
Europe under his thumb. What he wants for 
Germany and what he means to have is, first, 
breathing room for his people; and after that 
[177] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



a fair share of the commercial opportunities 
of the world. 

"German enlightenment and German insti- 
tutions will do the rest. And after this war — 
if we Germans win it — there will never be an- 
other universal war." 

The soldier spoke last. He is a captain of 
field artillery, a member of a distinguished 
Prussian family, and one of the most noted 
big-game hunters in Europe. Three weeks 
ago, in front of Charleroi, a French sharp- 
shooter put a bullet in him. It passed through 
his left forearm, pierced one lung and lodged 
in the muscles of his breast, where it lies im- 
bedded. In a week from now he expects to 
rejoin his command. 

To look at him you would never guess that 
he had so recently been wounded; his color is 
high and he moves with the stiff, precise alert- 
ness of the German army man. He is still 
wearing the coat he wore in the fight; there are 
two ragged little holes in the left sleeve and a 
puncture in the side of it; and it is spotted 
with stiff, dry, brown stains. 

"I don't presume to know anything about 
the political or commercial aspects of this 
war," he said over his beer mug; "but I do 
know this: War was forced on us by these 
other Powers. They were jealous of us and 
they made the Austrian-Servian quarrel their 
quarrel. But when war came we were ready 
and they were not. 

[178] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



"Not until the mobilization was ordered did 
the people of Germany know the color of the 
field uniform of their soldiers; yet four millions 
of these service uniforms were made and fin- 
ished and waiting in our military storehouses. 
Not until after the first shot was fired did we 
who are in the army know how many army 
corps we had, or the names of their com- 
manders, or even the names of the officers 
composing the general staff. 

"A week after we took the field our infantry, 
in heavy marching order, was covering fifty 
kilometers a day — thirty of your American 
miles — and doing it day after day without 
straggling and without any footsore men drop- 
ping behind. 

"Do these things count in the sum total? 
I say they do. Our army will win because it 
deserves to win through being ready and being 
complete and being efficient. Don't discount 
the efficiency of our navy either. Remember, 
we Germans have the name of being thorough. 
When our fleet meets the British fleet I think 
you will find that we have a few Krupp sur- 
prises for them." 

I may meet these confident gentlemen to- 
night. If not, it is highly probable I shall 
meet others who are equally confident, and 
who will express the same views, which they 
hold because they are the views of the German 
people. 

At eleven o'clock, when I start back to the 
[179] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



hotel, the streets will be almost empty. Aix 
will have gone to bed, and in bed it will peace- 
fully stay unless a military Zeppelin sails 
over its rooftrees, making a noise like ten 
million locusts all buzzing at once. There were 
two Zeppelins aloft last night, and from my 
window I saw one of them quite plainly. It 
was hanging almost stationary in the northern 
sky, like a huge yellow gourd. After a while 
it made off toward the west. One day last 
week three of them passed, all bound presum- 
ably for Paris or Antwerp, or even London. 
That time the people grew a bit excited; but 
now they take a Zeppelin much as a matter 
of course, and only wonder mildly where it 
came from and whither it is going. 

As for to-morrow, I imagine to-morrow will 
be another to-day; but yesterday was differ- 
ent. I had a streak of luck. It is forbidden 
to civilians, and more particularly to corre- 
spondents, to go prowling about eastern Bel- 
gium just now; but I found a friend in a nat- 
uralized German-American, formerly of Chi- 
cago, but living now in Germany, though he 
still retains his citizenship in the United 
States. 

Like every one else in Aachen, he is doing 
something for the government, though I can 
only guess at the precise nature of his services. 
At any rate he had an automobile, a scarce 
thing to find in private hands in these times; 
and, what was more, he had a military pass 
[180] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



authorizing him to go to Liege and to take 
two passengers along. He invited me to go 
with him for a day's ride through the country 
where the very first blows were swapped in 
the western theater of hostilities. 

We started off in the middle of a fickle- 
minded shower, which first blew puffs of wet- 
ness in our faces, like spray on a flawy day at 
sea, and then broke off to let the sun shine 
through for a minute or two. For two or 
three kilometers after clearing the town we 
ran through a district that smiled with peace 
and groaned with plenty. On the verandas of 
funny little gray roadhouses with dripping 
red roofs officers sat over their breakfast 
coffee. A string of wagons passed us, bound 
inward, full of big, white, clean-looking Ger- 
man pigs. A road builder, repairing the ruts 
made by the guns and baggage trains, stood 
aside for us to pass and pulled off his hat to 
us. This was Europe as it used to be — Europe 
as most American tourists knew it. 

We came to a tall barber pole which a care- 
less painter had striped with black on white 
instead of with red on white, and we knew 
by that we had arrived at the frontier. Also, 
there stood alongside the pole a royal forest 
ranger in green, with a queer cockaded hat 
on his head, doing sentry duty. As we stopped 
to show him our permits, and to give him a 
ripe pear and a Cologne paper, half a dozen 
soldiers came tumbling out of the guardroom 
[181] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



in the little customhouse, and ran up to beg 
from us, not pears, but papers. Clear to 
Liege we were to be importuned every few 
rods by soldiers begging for papers. Some 
had small wooden sign-boards bearing the word 
Zeitung, which they would lift and swing across 
the path of an approaching automobile. I 
began to believe after a while that if a man 
had enough newspapers in stock he could bribe 
his way through the German troops clear into 
France. These fellows who gathered about 
us now were of the Landsturm, men in their 
late thirties and early forties, with long, 
shaggy must aches. Their kind forms the 
handle of the mighty hammer whose steel 
nose is battering at France. Every third one 
of them wore spectacles, showing that the 
back lines of the army are extensively addicted 
to the favorite Teutonic sport of being near- 
sighted. Also, their coat sleeves invariably 
were too long for them, and hid their big hands 
almost to the knuckles. This is a characteristic 
I have everywhere noted among the German 
privates. If the French soldier's coat is over- 
lengthy in the skirt the German's is ultra- 
generous with cloth in the sleeves. I saw 
that their hair was beginning to get shaggy, 
showing that they had been in the field some 
weeks, since every German soldier — officer and 
private alike — leaves the barracks so close- 
cropped that his skin shows pinky through the 
bristles. Among them was one chap in blue 
[182] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



sailor's garb, left behind doubtless when forty- 
five hundred naval reserves passed through 
three days before to work the big guns in front 
of Antwerp. 

We went on. At first there was nothing to 
show we had entered Belgium except that the 
Prussian flag did not hang from a pole in front 
of every farmhouse, but only in front of every 
fourth house, say, or every fifth one. Then 
came stretches of drenched fields, vacant ex- 
cept for big black ravens and nimble piebald 
magpies, which bickered among themselves in 
the neglected and matted grain; and then we 
swung round a curve in the rutted roadway 
and were in the town of Battice. 

No; we were not in the town of Battice. 
We were where the town of Battice had been — 
where it stood six weeks ago. It was famous 
then for its fat, rich cheeses and its green 
damson plums. Now, and no doubt for years 
to come, it will be chiefly notable as having 
been the town where, it is said, Belgian civilians 
first fired on the German troops from roofs 
and windows, and where the Germans first 
inaugurated their ruthless system of reprisal 
on houses and people alike. 

Literally this town no longer existed. It 
was a scrap-heap, if you like, but not a town. 
Here had been a great trampling out of the 
grapes of wrath, and most sorrowful was the 
vintage that remained. 

It was a hard thing to level these Belgian 
[183] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



houses absolutely, for they were mainly built 
of stone or of thick brick coated over with a 
hard cement. So, generally, the walls stood, 
even in Battice; but always the roofs were 
gone, and the window openings were smudged 
cavities, through which you looked and saw 
square patches of the sky if your eyes inclined 
upward, or else blackened masses of ruination 
if you gazed straight in at the interiors. Once 
in a while one had been thrown flat. Probably 
big guns operated here. In such a case there 
was an avalanche of broken masonry cascading 
out into the roadway. 

Midway of the mile-long avenue of utter 
waste which we now traversed we came on a 
sort of small square. Here was the yellow 
village church. It lacked a spire and a cross, 
and the front door was gone, so we could see 
the wrecked altar and the splintered pews 
within. Flanking the church there had been 
a communal hall, which was now shapeless, 
irredeemable wreckage. A public well had stood 
in the open space between church and hall, 
with a design of stone pillars about it. The 
open mouth of the well we could see was choked 
with foul debris; but a shell had struck squarely 
among the pillars and they fell inward like 
wigwam poles, forming a crazy apex. I re- 
member distinctly two other things: a picture 
of an elderly man with whiskers — one of 
those smudged atrocities that are called in 
the States crayon portraits — hanging undam- 
[184] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



aged on the naked wall of what had been an 
upper bedroom; and a wayside shrine of the 
sort so common in the Catholic countries of 
Europe. A shell had hit it a glancing blow, 
so that the little china figure of the Blessed 
Virgin lay in bits behind the small barred 
opening of the shrine. 

Of living creatures there was none. Hereto- 
fore, in all the blasted towns I had visited, 
there was some human life stirring. One 
could count on seeing one of the old women who 
are so numerous in these Belgian hamlets — 
more numerous, I think, than anywhere else 
on earth. In my mind I had learned to asso- 
ciate such a sight with at least one old woman 
— an incredibly old woman, with a back bent 
like a measuring worm's, and a cap on her 
scanty hair, and a face crosshatched with a 
million wrinkles — who would be pottering 
about at the back of some half-ruined house 
or maybe squatting in a desolated doorway 
staring at us with her rheumy, puckered eyes. 
Or else there would be a hunchback — crooked 
spines being almost as common in parts of 
Belgium as goiters are in parts of Switzerland. 
But Battice had become an empty tomb, and 
was as lonely and as silent as a tomb. Its 
people — those who survived — had fled from it 
as from an abomination. 

Beyond Battice stood another village, called 
Herve; and Herve was Battice all over again, 
with variations. At this place, during the 
[185] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



first few hours of actual hostilities between 
the little country and the big one, the Belgians 
had tried to stem the inpouring German flood, 
as was proved by wrecks of barricades in the 
high street. One barricade had been built of 
wagon bodies and the big iron hods of road- 
scrapers; the wrecks of these were still piled at 
the road's edge. Yet there remained tangible 
proof of the German claim that they did not 
harry and burn indiscriminately, except in 
cases where the attack on them was by general 
concert. 

Here and there, on the principal street, in 
a row of ruins, stood a single house that was 
intact and undamaged. It was plain enough 
to be seen that pains had been taken to spare 
it from the common fate of its neighbors. 
Also, I glimpsed one short side street that had 
come out of the fiery visitation whole and 
unscathed, proving, if it proved anything, that 
even in their red heat the Germans had picked 
and chosen the fruit for the wine press of their 
vengeance. 

After Herve we encountered no more destruc- 
tion by wholesale, but only destruction by 
piecemeal, until, nearing Liege, we passed 
what remained of the most northerly of the 
ring of fortresses that formed the city's de- 
fenses. The conquerors had dismantled it 
and thrown down the guns, so that of the fort 
proper there was nothing except a low earthen 
wall, almost like a natural ridge in the earth. 
[186] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



All about it was an entanglement of barbed 
wire; the strands were woven and interwoven, 
tangled and twined together, until they sug- 
gested nothing so much as a great patch of 
blackberry briers after the leaves have dropped 
from the vines in the fall of the year. To take 
the works the Germans had to cut through 
these trochas. It seemed impossible to believe 
human beings could penetrate them, especially 
when one was told that the Belgians charged 
some of the wires with high electricity, so that 
those of the advancing party who touched them 
were frightfully burned and fell, with their 
garments blazing, into the jagged wire bram- 
bles, and were held there until they died. 

Before the charge and the final hand-to-hand 
fight, however, there was shelling. There was 
much shelling. Shells from the German guns 
that fell short or overshot the mark descended 
in the fields, and for a mile round these fields 
were plowed as though hundreds of plowshares 
had sheared the sod this way and that, until 
hardly a blade of grass was left to grow in its 
ordained place. Where shells had burst after 
they struck were holes in the earth five or six 
feet across and five or six feet deep. Shells 
from the German guns and from the Belgian 
guns had made a most hideous hash of a cluster 
of small cottages flanking a small smelting 
plant which stood directly in the line of fire. 
Some of these houses — workmen's homes, I 
suppose they had been — were of frame, sheathed 
[187] 



PATHS OP GLORY 



over with squares of tin put on in a diamond 
pattern; and you could see places where a shell, 
striking such a wall a glancing blow, had 
scaled it as a fish is scaled with a knife, leaving 
the bare wooden ribs showing below. The 
next house, and the next, had been hit squarely 
and plumply amidships, and they were gutted 
as fishes are gutted. One house in twenty, 
perhaps, would be quite whole, except for 
broken windows and fissures in the roof — as 
though the whizzing shells had spared it de- 
liberately. 

I recall that of one house there was left 
standing only a breadth of front wall between 
the places where windows had been. It rose 
in a ragged column to the line of the roof- 
rafters^ — only, of course, there was neither roof 
nor rafter now. On the face of the column, 
as though done in a spirit of bitter irony, was 
posted a proclamation, signed by the burgo- 
master and the military commandant, calling 
on the vanished dwellers of this place to pre- 
serve their tranquillity. 

On the side of the fort away from the city, 
and in the direction whence we had come, a 
corporal's guard had established itself in a 
rent-asunder house in order to be out of the 
wet. On the front of the house they had hung 
a captured Belgian bugler's uniform and a 
French dragoon's overcoat, which latter gar- 
ment was probably a trophy brought back 
from the lower lines of fighting; it made you 
[188] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



think of an old-clothes-man's shop. The cor- 
poral came forth to look at our passes before 
permitting us to go on. He was a dumpy, 
good-natured-looking Hanoverian with patchy 
saffron whiskers sprouting out on him. 

"Ach! yes," he said in answer to my con- 
ductor's question. "Things are quiet enough 
here now; but on Monday" — that would be 
three days before — "we shot sixteen men here 
— rioters and civilians who fired on our troops, 
and one graverobber — a dirty hound ! - They 
are yonder." 

He swung his arm; and following its swing 
we saw a mound of fresh-turned clay, perhaps 
twenty feet in length, which made a yellow 
streak against the green of a small inclosed 
pasture about a hundred yards away. We 
saw many such mounds that day; and this 
one where the ignoble sixteen lay was the 
shortest of the lot. Some mounds were fifty 
or sixty feet in length. I presume there were 
distinguishing marks on the filled-up trenches 
where the German dead lay, but from the 
automobile we could make out none. 

As we started on again, after giving the little 
Hanoverian the last treasured copy of a paper 
we had managed to keep that long against 
continual importunity, a big Belgian dog, with 
a dragging tail and a sharp jackal nose, loped 
round from behind an undamaged cow barn 
which stood back of the riven shell of a house 
where the soldiers were quartered. He had 
[1891 



PATHS OF GLORY 



the air about him of looking for somebody or 
something. 

He stopped short, sniffing and whining, at 
sight of the gray coats bunched in the door- 
way; and then, running back a few yards, with 
his head all the time turned to watch the 
strangers, he sat on his haunches, stuck his 
pointed muzzle upward toward the sky and 
fetched a long, homesick howl from the bottom 
of his disconsolate canine soul. When we 
turned a bend in the road, to enter the first 
recognizable street of Liege, he was still 
hunkered down there in the rain. He finished 
the picture; he keynoted it. The composition 
of it — for me — was perfect now. 

I mean no levity when I say that Liege was 
well shaken before taken; but merely that the 
phrase is the apt one for use, because it better 
expresses the truth than any other I can think 
of. Yet, considering what it went through, 
last month, Liege seemed to have emerged in 
better shape than one would have expected. 

Driving into the town I saw more houses 
with white flags — the emblem of complete 
surrender — fluttering from sill and coping, 
than houses bearing marks of the siege. In 
the bombardment the shells mostly appeared 
to have passed above the town — which was 
natural enough, seeing that the principal 
Belgian forts stood on the hilltops westward 
of and overlooking the city; and the principal 
German batteries — at least, until the last day 
[1901 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



of fighting — were posted behind temporary de- 
fenses, hastily thrown up, well to the east and 
north. 

Liege, squatted in the natural amphitheater 
below, practically escaped the fire of the big 
guns. The main concern of the noncombatants, 
they tell me, was to shelter themselves from the 
street fighting, which, by all accounts, was both, 
stubborn and sanguinary. The doughty Wal- 
loons who live in this corner of Belgium have had 
the name of being sincere and willing workers 
with bare steel since the days when Charles 
the Bold, of Burgundy, sought to curb their 
rebellious spirits by razing their city walls 
and massacring some ten thousand of them. 
And quite a spell before that, I believe, Julius 
Caesar found them tough to bend and hard to 
break. 

As for the Germans, checked as they had 
been in their rush on France by a foe whom 
they had regarded as too puny to count as 
a factor in the war, they sacrificed themselves 
by hundreds and thousands to win breathing- 
space behind standing walls until their great 
seventeen-inch siege guns could be brought 
from Essen and mounted by the force of engi- 
neers who came for that purpose direct from 
the Krupp works. 

In that portion of the town lying west of 

the Meuse we counted perhaps ten houses 

that were leveled flat and perhaps twenty 

that were now but burnt-out, riddled hulls 

[191] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



of houses, as empty and useless as so many 
shucked pea-pods. Of the bridges spanning 
the river, the principal one, a handsome four- 
span structure of stone ornamented with stone 
figures of river gods, lay now in shattered frag- 
ments, choking the current, where the Belgians 
themselves had blown it apart. One more 
bridge, or perhaps two — I cannot be sure — 
were closed to traffic because dynamite had 
made them unsafe; but the remaining bridges, 
of which I think there were three, showed no 
signs of rough treatment. Opposite the great 
University there was a big, black, ragged scar 
to show where a block of dwellings had stood. 

Liege, to judge from its surface aspect, 
could not well have been quieter. Business 
went on; buyers and sellers filled the side 
streets and dotted the long stone quays. Old 
Flemish men fished industriously below the 
wrecked stone bridge, where the debris made 
new eddies in the swift, narrow stream; and 
blue pigeons swarmed in the plaza before the 
Palais de Justice, giving to the scene a sugges- 
tion of St. Mark's Square at Venice. 

The German Landwehr, who were every- 
where about, treated the inhabitants civilly 
enough, and the inhabitants showed no out- 
ward resentment against the Germans. But 
beneath the lid a whole potful of potential 
trouble was brewing, if one might believe what 
the Germans told us. We talked with a young 
lieutenant of infantry who in more peaceful 
[192] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



times had been a staff cartoonist for a Berlin 
comic paper. He received us beneath the 
portico of the Theatre Royale, built after the 
model of the Odeon in Paris. Two waspish 
rapid-fire guns stood just within the shelter 
of the columns, with their black snouts point- 
ing this way and that to command the sweep 
of the three-cornered Place du Theatre. A 
company of soldiers was quartered in the 
theater itself. At night, so the lieutenant said, 
those men who were off duty rummaged the 
costumes out of the dressing rooms, put them 
on, and gave mock plays, with music. An 
officer's horse occupied what I think must have 
been the box office. It put its head out of a 
little window just over our heads and nickered 
when other horses passed. Against the side 
of the building were posters advertising a 
French company to play the Gallicized version 
of an American farce — "Baby Mine" — by Mar- 
garet Mayo. The borders of the posters were 
ornamented with prints of American flags done 
in the proper colors. 

"Yes, Liege seems quiet enough," said the 
lieutenant; "but we expect a revolt to break 
out at any time. We expected it last night, 
and the guard in the streets was tripled and 
doubled; and these little dears" — patting the 
muzzle of one of the machine guns — "were 
put here; and more like them were mounted 
on the porticoes of the Hotel de Ville and the 
Palais de Justice. So nothing happened in 
[193] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



the city proper, though in the outskirts three 
soldiers disappeared and are supposed to have 
been murdered, and a high officer" — he did 
not give the name or the rank — "was waylaid 
and killed just beyond the environs. 

"Now we fear that the uprising may come 
to-night. For the last three days the resi- 
dents, in great numbers, have been asking 
for permits to leave Liege and go into neutral 
territory in Holland, or to other parts of their 
own country. To us this sudden exodus — 
there seems to be no reason for it — looks 
significant. 

"These people are naturally turbulent. Al- 
ways they have been so. Most of them are 
makers of parts for firearms — gunmaking, you 
know, was the principal industry here — and 
they are familiar with weapons; and many of 
the men are excellent shots. This increases 
the danger. At first they were content to 
ambush single soldiers who strayed into obscure 
quarters after dark. Now it is forbidden for 
less than three soldiers in a party to go any- 
where at night; and they think from this that 
we are afraid, and are growing more daring. 

"By day they smile at us and bow, and are 
as polite as dancing masters; but at night 
the same men who smile at us will cheerfully 
cut the throat of any German who is foolish 
enough to venture abroad alone. 

"Besides, this town and all the towns be- 
tween here and Brussels are being secretly 
[194] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



flooded with papers printed in French telling 
the people that we have been beaten every- 
where to the south, and that the Allies are 
but a few miles away; and that if they will 
rise in numbers and destroy the garrisons re- 
enforcements will arrive the next morning to 
hold the district against us. 

"If they do rise it will be Louvain all over 
again. We shall burn Liege and kill all who 
are suspected of being in league against our 
troops. Assuredly many innocent ones will 
suffer then with the guilty; but what else 
can we do? We are living above a seething 
volcano." 

Certainly, though, never did volcano seethe 
more quietly. 

The garrison commander would not hear 
of our visiting any of the wrecked Belgian 
fortresses on the wooded heights behind the 
city. As a reason for his refusal he said that 
explosives in the buried magazines were be- 
ginning to go off, making it highly dangerous 
for spectators to venture near them. However, 
he had no objection to our going to a certain 
specified point within the zone of supposed 
safety. With a noncommissioned officer to 
guide us we climbed up a miry footpath to the 
crest of a low hill; and from a distance of 
perhaps a hundred yards we looked across at 
what was left of Fort Loncin, one of the prin- 
cipal defenses. 

I am wrong there. We did not look at 
[1951 



PATHS OF GLORY 



what was left of Fort Loncin. Literally 
nothing was left of it. As a fort it was gone, 
obliterated, wiped out, vanished. It had been 
of a triangular shape. It was of no shape now. 
We found it difficult to believe that the work 
of human hands had wrought destruction so 
utter and overwhelming. Where masonry 
walls had been was a vast junk heap; where 
stout magazines had been bedded down in 
hard concrete was a crater; where strong bar- 
racks had stood was a jumbled, shuffled 
nothingness. 

Standing there on the shell-torn hilltop, 
looking across to where the Krupp surprise 
wrote its own testimonials at its first time 
of using, in characters so deadly and devas- 
tating, I found myself somehow thinking of 
that foolish nursery tale wherein it is recited 
that a pig built himself a house of straw, and 
the wolf came; and he huffed and he puffed 
and he blew the house down. The non- 
commissioned officer told us an unknown num- 
ber of the defenders, running probably into 
the hundreds, had been buried so deeply be- 
neath the ruins of the fort in the last hours of 
the fighting that the Germans had been unable 
to recover the bodies. Even as he spoke a 
puff of wind brought to our nostrils a smell 
which, once a man gets it into his nose, he 
will never get the memory of it out again so 
long as he has a nose. Being sufficiently sick, 
we departed thence. 

[196] 



THE GRAPES OF WRATH 



As we rode back, and had got as far as 
the two ruined villages, it began to rain very 
hard. The rain, as it splashed into the puddles, 
stippled the farther reaches of the road thickly 
with dots, and its slanting lines turned every- 
thing into one gray etching which you might 
have labeled Desolation! And you would 
make no mistake in your labeling. Then — 
with one of those tricks of deliberate drama 
by which Nature sometimes shames stage 
managers — the late afternoon sun came out 
just after we crossed the frontier, and shone 
on us; and on the dapper young officers driving 
out in carriages; and on the peaceful German 
country places with their formal gardens; and 
on a crate of fat white German pigs riding to 
market to be made up into sausages for the 
placid burghers of Aix-la-Chapelle. 



[197] 



CHAPTER VIII 
THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 



TO get to the civic midriff of the ancient 
and honorable French city of Laon you 
must ascend a road that winds in spi- 
rals about a high, steep hill, like threads 
cut in a screw. Doing this you come at length 
to the flat top of the screw — a most curiously 
flat top — and find on this side of you the 
Cathedral and the market-place, and on that 
side of you the Hotel de Ville, where a German 
flag hangs among the iron lilies in the grille- 
worked arms of the Republic above the front 
doors. Dead ahead of you is the Prefecture, 
which is a noble stone building, facing south- 
ward toward the River Aisne; and it has 
decorations of the twentieth century, a gate- 
way of the thirteenth century and plumbing 
of the third century, when there was no plumb- 
ing to speak of. 

We had made this journey and now the hour 
was seven in the evening, and we were dining 
[1981 



THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 



in the big hall of the Prefecture as the guests 
of His Excellency, Field Marshal von Heerin- 
gen, commanding the Seventh Army of the 
German Kaiser— dining, I might add, from 
fine French plates, with smart German orderlies 
for waiters. 

Except us five, and one other, the twenty-odd 
who sat about the great oblong table were 
members of the Over-General's staff. We five 
were Robert J. Thompson, American consul 
at Aix-la-Chapelle; McCutcheon and Bennett, 
of the Chicago Tribune; Captain Alfred Man- 
nesmann, of the great German manufacturing 
firm of Mannesmann Mulag; and myself. 
The one other was a Berlin artist, by name 
Follbehr, who having the run of the army, 
was going out daily to do quick studies in 
water colors in the trenches and among the 
batteries. He did them remarkably well, too, 
seeing that any minute a shell might come and 
spatter him all over his own drawing board. 
All the rest, though, were generals and colonels 
and majors, and such— youngish men mostly. 
Excluding our host I do not believe there was 
a man present who had passed fifty years of 
age; but the General was nearer eighty than 
fifty, being one of the veterans of the Franco- 
Prussian War, whom their Emperor had ordered 
out of desk jobs in the first days of August to 
shepherd his forces in the field. At his call 
they came— Von Heeringen and Von Hinden- 
berg and Von Zwehl, to mention three names 
[ 199 ] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



that speedily became catchwords round the 
world — with their gray heads full of Prussian 
war tactics; and very soon their works had 
justified the act of their imperial master in 
choosing them for leadership, and now they 
had new medals at their throats and on their 
breasts to overlay the old medals they won 
back in 1870-71. 

Like many of the older officers of the German 
Army I met, Von Heeringen spoke no English, 
in which regard he was excessively unlike 
ninety per cent of the younger officers. Among 
them it was an uncommon thing in my ex- 
perience to find one who did not know at least 
a smattering of English and considerably more 
than a smattering of understandable French. 
Even that marvelous organism, the German 
private soldier, was apt to astonish you at 
unexpected moments by answering in fair- 
enough English the questions you put to him 
in fractured and dislocated German. 

Not once or twice, but a hundred times dur- 
ing my cruising about in Belgium and Ger- 
many and France, I laboriously unloaded a 
string of crippled German nouns and broken- 
legged adjectives and unsocketed verbs on a 
hickory-looking sentry, only to have him reply 
to me in my own tongue. It would come 
out then that he had been a waiter at a British 
seaside resort or a steward on a Hamburg- 
American liner; or, oftener still, that he had 
studied English at the public schools in his 
[200] 



THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 

native town of Kiel, or Coblenz, or Dresden, 
or somewhere. 

The officers' English, as I said before, was 
nearly always ready and lubricant. To one 
who spoke no French and not enough German 
to hurt him, this proficiency in language on 
the part of the German standing army was 
a precious boon. The ordinary double-barreled 
dictionary of phrases had already disclosed 
itself as a most unsatisfying volume in which 
to put one's trust. It was wearing on the 
disposition to turn the leaves trying to find 
out how to ask somebody to pass the butter 
and find instead whole pages of parallel col- 
umns of translated sentences given over to 
such questions as "Where is the aunt of my 
stepfather's second cousin?" 

As a rule a man does not go to Europe 
in time of war to look up his relatives by mar- 
riage. He may even have gone there to avoid 
them. War is terrible enough without lugging 
in all the remote kinsfolk a fellow has. How 
much easier, then, to throw oneself on the 
superior educational qualifications of the Ger- 
man military machine. Somebody was sure 
to have a linguistic life net there, rigged and 
ready for you to drop into. 

It was so in this instance, as it has been so 
in many instances before and since. The 
courteous gentlemen who sat at my right 
side and at my left spoke in German or French 
or English as the occasion suited, while old 
[2011 



PATHS OF GLORY 



Von Heeringen boomed away in rumbling 
German phrases. As I ate I studied him. 

Three weeks later, less a day, I met by 
appointment Lord Kitchener and spent forty 
minutes, or thereabouts, in his company at 
the War Office in London. In the midst of 
the interview, as I sat facing Kitchener I 
began wondering, in the back part of my head, 
who it was Lord Kitchener reminded me of. 
Suddenly the answer came to me, and it jolted 
me. The answer was Von Heeringen. 

Physically the two men — Kitchener of Khar- 
toum and Von Heeringen, the Gray Ghost of 
Metz — had nothing in common; mentally I 
conceived them to be unlike. Except that 
both of them held the rank of field marshal, I 
could put my finger on no point of similarity, 
either in personality or in record, which these 
men shared between them. It is true they 
both served in the war of 1870-71; but at the 
outset this parallel fell flat, too, because one 
had been a junior officer on the German side 
and the other a volunteer on the French side. 
One was a Prussian in every outward aspect; 
the other was as British as it is possible for a 
Briton to be. One had been at the head of 
the general staff of his country, and was now 
in the field in active service with a sword at his 
side. The other, having served his country 
in the field for many years, now sat intrenched 
behind a roll-top desk, directing the ma- 
chinery of the War Office, with a pencil for a 
[202] 



THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 



baton. Kitchener was in his robust sixties, 
with a breast like a barrel; Von Heeringen 
was in his shrinking, drying-up seventies, and 
his broad shoulders had already begun to 
fold in on his ribs and his big black eyes to 
retreat deeper into his skull. One was beaky- 
nosed, hatchet-headed, bearded; the other was 
broad-faced and shaggily mustached. One 
had been famed for his accessibility; the other 
for his inaccessibility. 

So, because of these acutely dissimilar things, 
I marveled to myself that day in London why, 
when I looked at Kitchener, I should think 
of Von Heeringen. In another minute, though, 
I knew why: Both men radiated the same 
quality of masterfulness; both of them physi- 
cally typified competency; both of them looked 
on the world with the eyes of men who are 
born to have power and to hold dominion over 
lesser men. Put either of these two in the rags 
of a beggar or the motley of a Pantaloon, and 
at a glance you would know him for a leader. 
Considering that we were supposed to be 
at the front on this evening at Laon, the food 
was good, there being a soup, and the in- 
variable veal on which a German buttresses the 
solid foundations of his dinner, a salad and fruit, 
red wine and white wine and brandy. Also, 
there were flies amounting in numbers to a great 
multitude. The talk, like the flies, went to and 
fro about the table; and always it was worth 
hearing, since it dealt largely with first-hand 
[203] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



experiences in the very heart of the fighting. 
Yet I must add that not all the talk was talk 
of war. In peaceful Aix-la-Chapelle, whence 
we had come, the people knew but one topic. 
Here, on the forward frayed edge of the battle 
line, the men who had that day played their 
part in battle occasionally spoke of other 
things. I recall there was a discussion between 
Captain von Theobald, of the Artillery, and 
Major Humplmayer, of the Automobile Corps, 
on the merits of a painting that filled one of 
the panels in the big, handsome, overdecorated 
hall. The major won, which was natural 
enough, since, in time of peace, he was by 
way of being a collector of and dealer in art 
objects at Munich. Somebody else mentioned 
big-game shooting. For five minutes, then, 
or such a matter, the ways of big game and 
the ways of shooting it held the interest of half 
a dozen men at our curve of the table. 

In such an interlude as this the listener 
might almost have lulled himself into the 
fancy that, after all, there was no war; that these 
courteous, gray-coated, shoulder-strapped gen- 
tlemen were not at present engaged in the 
business of killing their fellowmen; that this 
building wherein we sat, with its florid velvet 
carpets underfoot and its too-heavy chandeliers 
overhead, was not the captured chateau of the 
governor of a French province; and that the 
deep-eyed, white-fleeced, bull-voiced old man 
who sat just opposite was not the commander 
[2041 



THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 

of sundry hundreds of thousands of fighting 
men with guns in their hands, but surely was 
no more and no less than the elderly lord of the 
manor, who, having a fancy for regimentals, 
had put on his and had pinned some glittering 
baubles on his coat and then had invited a 
few of his friends and neighbors in for a simple 
dinner on this fine evening of the young 
autumn. 

Yet we knew that already the war had 
taken toll of nearly every man in uniform 
who was present about this board. General 
von Heeringen's two sons, both desperately 
wounded, were lying in field hospitals — one 
in East Prussia, the other in northern France 
not many miles from where we were. His 
second in command had two sons — his only 
two sons — killed in the same battle three 
weeks before. When, a few minutes earlier, 
I had heard this I stared at him, curious to 
see what marks so hard a stroke would leave 
on a man. I saw only a grave middle-aged 
gentleman, very attentive to the consul who 
sat beside him, and very polite to us all 

Prince Scharmberg-Lippe, whom we had 
passed driving away from the Prefecture in 
his automobile as we drove to it in ours, was 
the last of four brothers. The other three 
were killed in the first six weeks of fighting. 
Our own companion, Captain Mannesmann, 
heard only the day before, when we stopped 
at Hirson — just over the border from Bel- 
[205] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



gium — that his cousin had won the Iron Cross 
for conspicuous courage, and within three 
days more was to hear that this same cousin 
had been sniped from ambush during a night 
raid down the left wing. 

Nor had death been overly stingy to the 
members of the Staff itself. We gathered as 
much from chance remarks. And so, as it 
came to be eight o'clock, I caught myself 
watching certain vacant chairs at our table 
and at the two smaller tables in the next room 
with a strained curiosity. 

One by one the vacant chairs filled up. At 
intervals the door behind me would open and 
an officer would clank in, dusted over with 
the sift of the French roads. He would bow 
ceremoniously to his chief and then to the com- 
pany generally, slip into an unoccupied chair, 
give an order over his shoulder to a soldier- 
waiter, and at once begin to eat his dinner 
with the air of a man who has earned it. 
After a while there was but one place vacant 
at our table; it was next to me. I could not 
keep my eyes away from it. It got on my 
nerves — that little gap in the circle; that little 
space of white linen, bare of anything but two 
unfilled glasses. To me it became as porten- 
tous as an unscrewed coffin lid. No one else 
seemed to notice it. Cigars had been passed 
round and the talk eddied casually back and 
forth with the twisty smoke wreaths. 

An orderly drew the empty chair back with 
[2061 



THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 



a thump. I think I jumped. A slender man, 
whose uniform fitted him as though it had 
been his skin, was sitting down beside me. 
Unlike those who came before him, he had 
entered so quietly that I had not sensed his 
coming. I heard the soldier call him Excel- 
lency; and I heard him tell the soldier not to 
give him any soup. We swapped common- 
places, I telling him what my business there 
was; and for a little while he plied his knife 
and fork busily, making the heavy gold curb 
chain on his left wrist tinkle musically. 

"I'm rather glad they did not get me this 
afternoon," he said as though to make con- 
versation with a stranger. "This is first-rate 
veal — better than we usually have here." 

"Get you?" I said. "Who wanted to get 
you? 

( "Our friends, the enemy," he answered. 

I was in one of our trenches rather well toward 
the front, and a shell or two struck just behind 
me. I think, from their sound, they were 
French shells." 

^ This debonair gentleman, as presently trans- 
pired, was Colonel von Scheller, for four years 
consul to the German Embassy at Washington, 
more lately minister for foreign affairs of the 
kingdom of Saxony, and now doing staff duty 
in the ordnance department here at the Ger- 
man center. He had the sharp brown eyes 
of a courageous fox terrier, a mustache that 
turned up at the ends, and a most beautiful 
[207] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



command of the English language and its 
American idioms. He hurried along with his 
dinner and soon he had caught up with us. 

"I suggest," he said, "that we go out on 
the terrace to drink our coffee. It is about 
time for the French to start their evening 
benediction, as we call it. They usually quit 
firing their heavy guns just before dark, and 
usually begin again at eight and keep it up 
for an hour or two." 

So we two took our coffee cups and our cigars 
in our hands and went out through a side 
passage to the terrace, and sat on a little iron 
bench, where a shaft of light, from a window 
of the room we had just quit, showed a narrow 
streak of flowering plants beyond the bricked 
wall and a clump of red and yellow woodbine 
on a low wall. 

The rest lay in blackness; but I knew, from 
what I had seen before dusk came, that we 
must be somewhere near the middle of a broad 
terrace — a hanging garden rather — full of sun- 
dials and statues and flower beds, which over- 
hung the southern face of the Hill of Laon, 
and from which, in daylight, a splendid view 
might be had of wooded slopes falling away 
into wide, flat valleys, and wide, flat valleys 
rising again to form more wooded slopes. I 
knew, too, from what I remembered, that the 
plateau immediately beneath us was flyspecked 
with the roofs of small abandoned villages; 
and that the road which ran straight from the 
[208] 



THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 



base of the heights toward the remote river 
was a-crawl with supply wagons and ammuni- 
tion wagons going forward to the German 
batteries, seven miles away, and with scouts 
and messengers in automobiles and on motor 
cycles, and the day's toll of wounded in ambu- 
lances coming back from the front. 

We could not see them when we went to 
the parapet and looked downward into the 
black gulf below, but the rumbling of the 
wheels and the panting of the motors came up 
to us. With these came, also, the remote 
music of those queer little trumpets carried 
by the soldiers who ride beside the drivers of 
German military automobiles; and this sounded 
as thinly and plaintively to our ears as the cries 
of sandpipers heard a long way off across a 
windy beach. 

We could hear something else too: the 
evening benediction had started. Now fast, 
now slow, like the beating of a feverish pulse,' 
the guns sounded in faint throbs; and all along 
the horizon from southeast to southwest, and 
back again, ran flares and waves of a sullen 
red radiance. The light flamed high at one 
instant— like fireworks— and at the next it 
died almost to a glow, as though a great bed 
of peat coals or a vast limekiln lay on the 
farthermost crest of the next chain of hills. 
It was the first time I had ever seen artillery 
fire at night, though I had heard it often 
enough by then in France and in Belgium, and 
[2091 



PATHS OF GLORY 



even in Germany; for when the wind blew out 
of the west we could hear in Aix-la-Chapelle 
the faint booming of the great cannons before 
Antwerp, days and nights on end. 

I do not know how long I stood and looked 
and listened. Eventually I was aware that the 
courteous Von Scheller, standing at my elbow, 
was repeating something he had already stated 
at least once. 

"Those brighter flashes you see, apparently 
coming from below the other lights, are our 
guns," he was saying. "They seem to be below 
the others because they are nearer to us. 
Personally I don't think these evening volleys 
do very much damage," he went on as though 
vaguely regretful that the dole of death by 
night should be so scanty, "because it is im- 
possible for the men in the outermost observa- 
tion pits to see the effect of the shots; but we 
answer, as you notice, just to show the French 
and English we are not asleep." 

Those iron vespers lasted, I should say, 
for the better part of an hour. When they were 
ended we went indoors. Everybody was as- 
sembled in the long hall of the Prefecture, 
and a young officer was smashing out marching 
songs on the piano. The Berlin artist made 
an art gallery of the billiard table and was 
exhibiting the water-color sketches he had 
done that day — all very dashing and spirited 
in their treatment, though a bit splashy and 
scrambled-eggish as to the use of the pigments. 
[210] 



THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 

A very young man, with the markings of a 
captain on shoulder and collar, came in and 
went up to General von Heeringen and showed 
him something — something that looked like a 
very large and rather ornamental steel coal 
scuttle which had suffered from a serious per- 
sonal misunderstanding with an ax. The 
elongated top of it, which had a fluted, rudder- 
like adornment, made you think of Siegfried's 
helmet in the opera; but the bottom, which 
was squashed out of shape, made you think 
of a total loss. 

When the general had finished looking ax 
this object we all had a chance to finger it. 
The young captain seemed quite proud of it 
and bore it off with him to the dining room. 
It was what remained of a bomb, and had been 
loaded with slugs of lead and those iron cherries 
that are called shrapnel. A French flyer had 
dropped it that afternoon with intent to de- 
stroy one of the German captive balloons and 
its operator. The young officer was the oper- 
ator of the balloon in question. It was his 
daily duty to go aloft, at the end of a steel 
tether, and bob about for seven hours at a 
stretch, studying the effects of the shell fire 
and telephoning down directions for the proper 
aiming of the guns. He had been up seven 
hundred feet in the air that afternoon, with 
no place to go in case of accident, when the 
Frenchman came over and tried to hit him. 

"It struck within a hundred meters of me," 
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PATHS OF GLORY 



called back the young captain as he disappeared 
through the dining-room doorway. "Made 
quite a noise and tore up the earth consider- 
ably." 

"He was lucky — the young Herr Captain," 
said Von Scheller — "luckier than his prede- 
cessor. A fortnight ago one of the enemy's 
flyers struck one of our balloons with a bomb 
and the gas envelope exploded. When the 
wreckage reached the earth there was nothing 
much left of the operator — poor fellow! — 
except the melted buttons on his coat. There 
are very few safe jobs in this army, but being 
a captive-balloon observer is one of the least 
safe of them all." 

I had noted that the young captain wore 
in the second buttonhole of his tunic the black- 
and-white-striped ribbon and the black-and- 
white Maltese Cross; and now when I looked 
about me I saw that at least every third man 
of the present company likewise bore such a 
decoration. I knew the Iron Cross was given 
to a man only for gallant conduct in time of 
war at the peril of his life. 

A desire to know a few details beset me. 
Humplmayer, the scholarly art dealer, was at 
my side. He had it too — the Iron Cross of 
the first class. 

"You won that lately?" I began, touching 
the ribbon. 

"Yes," he said; "only the other day I re- 
ceived it." 

[212] 



THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 

"And for what, might I ask?" said I, pressing 
my advantage. 

"Oh," he said, "I've been out quite a bit 
in the night air lately. You know we Germans 
are desperately afraid of night air." 

Later I learned — though not from Humpl- 
mayer — that he had for a period of weeks 
done scout work in an automobile in hostile 
territory; which meant that he rode in the 
darkness over the strange roads of an alien 
country, exposed every minute to the chances 
of ambuscade and barbed-wire mantraps and 
the like. I judge he earned his bauble. 

I tried Von Theobald next — a lynx-faced, 
square-shouldered young man of the field guns. 
To him I put the question: "What have you 
done, now, to merit the bestowal of the Cross?" 

"Well," he said — and his smile was born of 
embarrassment, I thought — "there was shoot- 
ing once or twice, and I — well, I did not go 
away. I remained." 

So after that I quit asking. But it was 
borne in upon me that if these gold-braceletted, 
monocled, wasp-waisted exquisites could go 
jauntily forth for flirtations with death as afore- 
time I had seen them going, then also they 
could be marvelously modest touching on their 
own performances in the event of their sur- 
viving those most fatal blandishments. 

Pretty soon we told the Staff good night, ac- 
cording to the ritualistic Teutonic fashion, 
and took ourselves off to bed; for the next 
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PATHS OF GLORY 



day was expected to be a full day, which it 
was indeed and verily. In the hotels of the 
town, such as they were, officers were billeted, 
four to the room and two to the bed; but the 
commandant enthroned at the Hotel de Ville 
looked after our comfort. He sent a soldier 
to nail a notice on the gate of one of the hand- 
somest houses in Laon — a house whence the 
tenants had fled at the coming of the Germans 
— which notice gave warning to all whom it 
might concern that Captain Mannesmann, 
who carried the Kaiser's own pass, and four 
American Herren were, until further orders, 
domiciled there. And the soldier tarried to 
clean our boots while we slept and bring us 
warm shaving water in the morning. 

Being thus provided for we tramped away 
through the empty winding streets to Number 
Five, Rue St. Cyr, which was a big, fine 
three-story mansion with its own garden and 
courtyard. Arriving there we drew lots for 
bedrooms. It fell to me to occupy one that 
evidently belonged to the master of the house. 
He must have run away in a hurry. His bath- 
robe still hung on a peg; his other pair of sus- 
penders dangled over the footboard; and his 
shaving brush, with dried lather on it, was on 
the floor. I stepped on it as I got into bed 
and hurt my foot. 

Goodness knows I was tired enough, but I 
lay awake a while thinking what changes in 
our journalistic fortunes thirty days had 
[2141 



THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 

brought us. Five weeks before, bearing dan- 
gerously dubious credentials, we had trailed 
afoot — a suspicious squad — at the tail of the 
German columns, liable to be halted and 
locked up any minute by any fingerling of a 
sublieutenant who might be so minded to so 
serve us. In that stressful time a war cor- 
respondent was almost as popular, with the 
officialdom of the German army, as the Asiatic 
cholera would have been. The privates were 
our best friends then. Just one month, to 
the hour and the night, after we slept on 
straw as quasi-prisoners and under an armed 
guard in a schoolhouse belonging to the Prince 
de Caraman-Chimay, at Beaumont, we dined 
with the commandant of a German garrison 
in the castle of another prince of the same 
name — the Prince de Chimay — at the town of 
Chimay, set among the timbered preserves of 
the ancient house of Chimay. In Belgium, 
at the end of August, we fended and foraged 
for ourselves aboard a train of wounded and 
prisoners. In northern France, at the end of 
September, Prince Reuss, German minister to 
Persia, but serving temporarily in the Red Cross 
Corps, had bestirred himself to find lodgings 
for us. And now, thanks to a newborn desire 
on the part of the Berlin War Office to let the 
press of America know something of the effects 
of their operations on the people of the invaded 
states, here we were, making free with a 
strange French gentleman's chateau and mess- 
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PATHS OF GLORY 



ing with an Over-General's Staff. Lying there, 
in another man's bed, I felt like a burglar and 
I slept like an oyster — the oyster being, as nat- 
uralists know, a most sound sleeper. 

In the morning there was breakfast at the 
great table — the flies of the night before being 
still present — with General von Heeringen 
inquiring most earnestly as to how we had 
rested, and then going out to see to the day's 
killing. Before doing so, however, he detailed 
the competent Captain von Theobald and the 
efficient Lieutenant Giebel to serve for the 
day as our guides while we studied briefly the 
workings of the German war machine in the 
actual theater of war. 

It was under their conductorship that about 
noon we aimed our automobiles for the spot 
where, in accordance with provisions worked 
out in advance, but until that moment un- 
known to us, we were to lunch with another 
general — Von Zwehl, of the reserves. We left 
the hill, where the town was, some four miles 
behind us, and when we had passed through 
two wrecked and silent villages and through 
three of those strips of park timber which 
Continentals call forests, we presently drew 
up and halted and dismounted where a thick 
fringe of undergrowth, following the line of 
an old and straggly thorn hedge, met the road 
at right angles on the comb of a small ridge 
commanding a view of the tablelands to the 
southward 

[2181 



THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 

As we climbed up the banks we were aware 
of certain shelters which were like overgrown 
rabbit hutches cunningly contrived of wattled 
faggots and straw sheaves plaited together. 
They had tarpaulin interlinings and dug-out 
earthen floors covered over thickly with straw. 
These cozy small shacks hid themselves behind 
a screen of haws among the scattered trees 
which flanked an ancient fortification, aban- 
doned many years before, I judged, by the 
grass-grown looks of it. Out in front, upon 
the open crest of the rise, staff officers were 
grouped about two telescopes mounted on 
tripods. An old man — you could tell by the 
hunch of his shoulders he was old — sat on a 
camp chair with his back to us and his face 
against the barrels of one of the telescopes. 
With his long dust-colored coat and the lacings 
of violent scarlet upon his cap and his upturned 
collar he made you think of one of those big 
gray African parrots that talk so fluently and 
bite so viciously. But when, getting nimbly 
up, he turned to greet us and be introduced 
the resemblance vanished. There was nothing 
of the parrot about him now, Here was a man 
part watch dog and part hawk. His cheeks and 
the flanges of his nostrils were thickly hair- 
lined with those little red-and-blue veins that 
are to be found in the texture of good Amer- 
ican paper currency and in the faces of elderly 
men who have lived much out-of-doors during 
their lives. His jowls were heavy and pen- 
[217] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



dulous like a mastiff's. His frontal bone came 
down low and straight so that under the flat 
arch of the brow his small, very bright agate- 
blue eyes looked out as from beneath half- 
closed shutters. His hair was clipped close to 
his scalp and the shape of his skull showed, 
rounded and bulgy; not the skull of a thinker, 
nor yet the skull of a creator, just the skull 
of a natural-born fighting man. The big, 
ridgy veins in the back of his neck stood out 
like window-cords from a close smocking of 
fine wrinkles. The neck itself was tanned 
to a brickdust red. A gnawed white mustache 
bristled on his upper lip. He was tall without 
seeming to be tall and broad without appearing 
broad, and he was old enough for a grand- 
father and spry enough for his own grandchild. 
You know the type. Our Civil War produced 
it in number. 

At his throat was the blue star of the Order 
of Merit, the very highest honor a German 
soldier can win, and below it on his breast 
the inevitable black-and-white striped ribbon. 
The one meant leadership and the other testi- 
fied to individual valor in the teeth of danger. 
It was Excellency von Zwehl, commander of 
the Seventh Reserve Corps of the Western 
Army, the man who took Maubeuge from the 
French and English, and the man who in the 
same week held the imperiled German center 
against the French and English. 

We lunched with the General and his staff 
[218] 



THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 

on soup and sausages, with a rare and precious 
Belgian melon cut in thin, salmon-tinted 
crescents to follow for dessert. But before the 
lunch he took us and showed us, pointing this 
way and that with his little riding whip, the 
theater wherein he had done a thing which he 
valued more than the taking of a walled city. 
Indeed there was a certain elemental boylike 
bearing of pride in him as he told us the story. 
If I am right in my dates the defenses of 
Maubeuge caved in under the batterings of 
the German Jack Johnsons on September 
sixth and the citadel surrendered September 
seventh. On the following day, the eighth, Von 
Zwehl got word that a sudden forward thrust 
of the Allies threatened the German center at 
Laon. Without waiting for orders he started to 
the relief. He had available only nine thousand 
troops, all reserves. As many more shortly re- 
enforced him. He marched this small army — 
small, that is, as armies go these Titan times — for 
four days and three nights. In the last twenty- 
four hours of marching the eighteen thousand 
covered more than forty English miles — in the 
rain. They came on this same plateau, the 
one which we now faced, at six o'clock of the 
morning of September thirteenth, and within 
an hour were engaged against double or triple 
their number. Von Zwehl held off the enemy 
until a strengthening force reached him, and 
then for three days, with his face to the river 
and his back to the hill, he fought. Out of a 
[219] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



total force of forty thousand men he lost eight 
thousand and more in killed and wounded, 
but he saved the German Army from being 
split asunder between its shoulder-blades. The 
enemy in proportion lost even more than he 
did, he thought. The General had no English; 
he told us all this in German, Von Theobald 
standing handily by to translate for him when 
our own scanty acquaintance with the lan- 
guage left us puzzled. 

"We punished them well and they punished 
us well," he added. "We captured a group 
of thirty-one Scotchmen — all who were left 
out of a battalion of six hundred and fifty, 
and there was no commissioned officer left of 
that battalion. A sergeant surrendered them 
to my men. They fight very well against us — 
the Scotch." 

Since then the groundswell of battle had 
swept forward, then backward, until now, as 
chance would have it, General von Zwehl once 
more had his headquarters on the identical 
spot where he had them four weeks before 
during his struggle to keep the German center 
from being pierced. Then it had been mainly 
infantry fighting at close range; now it was 
the labored pounding of heavy guns, the 
pushing ahead of trench-work preparatory to 
another pitched battle. 

Considering what had taken place here 
less than a month before the plain imme- 
diately before us seemed peaceful enough. 
[2201 



THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 

Nature certainly works mighty fast to cover 
up what man at war does. True, the yellow- 
green meadowlands ahead of us were scuffed 
and scored minutely as though a myriad swine 
had rooted there for mast. The gouges of 
wheels and feet were at the roadside. Under 
the broken hedge-rows you saw a littering of 
weather-beaten French knapsacks and mired 
uniform coats, but that was all. New grass 
was springing up in the hoof tracks, and in a 
pecking, puny sort of way an effort was being 
made by certain French peasants within sight 
to get back to work in their wasted truck 
patches. Near at hand I counted three men 
and an old woman in the fields, bent over 
like worms. On the crest above them stood 
this gray veteran of two invasions of their 
land, aiming with his riding whip. The whip, 
I believe, signifies dominion, and sometimes 
brute force. 

Beyond the tableland, and along the suc- 
cession of gentle elevations which ringed it in 
to the south, the pounding of the field pieces 
went steadily on, while Von Zwehl lectured to 
us upon the congenial subject of what he here 
had done. Out yonder a matter of three or 
four English miles from us the big ones were 
busy for a fact. We could see the smoke clouds 
of each descending shell and the dust clouds of 
the explosion, and of course we could hear it. 
It never stopped for an instant, never abated 
for so much as a minute. It had been going 
[221] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



on this way for weeks; it would surely go on 
this way for weeks yet to come. But so far 
as we could discern the General paid it no 
heed — he nor any of his staff. It was his busi- 
ness, but seemingly the business went well. 

It was late that afternoon when we met our 
third general, and this meeting was quite by 
chance. Coming back from a spin down the 
lines we stopped in a small village called 
Amifontaine, to let our chauffeur, known affec- 
tionately as The Human Rabbit, tinker with 
a leaky tire valve or something. A young 
officer came up through the dusk to find out 
who we were, and, having found out, he in- 
vited us into the chief house of the place, 
and there in a stuffy little French parlor we 
were introduced in due form to General d'Elsa, 
the head of the Twelfth Reserve Corps, it 
turned out. Standing in a ceremonious ring, 
with filled glasses in our hands, about a table 
which bore a flary lamp and a bottle of bad 
native wine, we toasted him and he toasted us. 

He was younger by ten years, I should say, 
th,an either Von Heeringen or Von Zwehl; too 
young, I judged, to have got his training in 
the blood-and-iron school of Bismarck and 
Von Moltke of which the other two must 
have been brag-scholars. Both of them, I 
think, were Prussians, but this general was a 
Saxon from the South. Indeed, as I now re- 
call, he said his home in peace times was in 
Dresden. He seemed less simple of manner 
[2221 



THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 

than they; they in turn lacked a certain flexi- 
bility and grace of bearing which were his. 
But two things in common they all three had 
and radiated from them — a superb efficiency 
in the trade at which they worked and a 
superb confidence in the tools with which they 
did the work. This was rather a small man, 
quick and supple in his movements. He had 
a limited command of English, and he appeared 
deeply desirous that we Americans should have 
a good opinion of the behavior of his troops 
and that we should say as much in what we 
wrote for our fellow Americans to read. 

Coming out of the house to reenter our 
automobile I saw, across the small square of 
the town, which by now was quite in dark- 
ness, the flare of a camp kitchen. I wanted 
very much to examine one of these wheeled 
cook wagons at close range. An officer — the 
same who had first approached us to examine 
our papers — accompanied me to explain its 
workings and to point out the various com- 
partments where the coal was kept and the 
fuel, and the two big sunken pots where the 
stew was cooked and the coffee was brewed. 
The thing proved to be cumbersome, which 
was German, but it was most complete in 
detail, and that, take it, was German too. 
While the officer rattled the steel lids the 
cook himself stood rigidly alongside, with his 
fingers touching the seams of his trousers. 
Seen by the glare of his own fire he seemed 
[2231 



PATHS OF GLORY 



a clod, fit only to make soups and feed a fire 
box. But by that same flickery light I saw 
something. On the breast of his grease- 
spattered blouse dangled a black-and-white 
ribbon with a black-and-white Maltese cross 
fastened to it. I marveled that a company 
cook should wear the Iron Cross of the second 
class and I asked the captain about it. He 
laughed at the wonder that was evident in my 
tones. 

"If you will look more closely," he said, 
"you will see that a good many of our cooks 
already have won the Iron Cross since this 
war began, and a good many others will yet 
win it — if they live. We have no braver men 
in our army than these fellows. They go into 
the trenches at least twice a day, under the 
hottest fire sometimes, to carry hot coffee and 
hot food to the soldiers who fight. A good 
many of them have already been killed. 

"Only the other day — at La Fere I think 
it was — two of our cooks at daybreak went 
so far forward with their wagon that they were 
almost inside the enemy's lines. Sixteen be- 
wildered Frenchmen who had got separated 
from their company came straggling through 
a little forest and walked right into them. 
The Frenchmen thought the cook wagon with 
its short smoke funnel and its steel fire box 
was a new kind of machine gun, and they threw 
down their guns and surrendered. The two 
cooks brought their sixteen Drisoners back to 
[224] 



THREE GENERALS AND A COOK 

our lines too, but first one of them stood guard 
over the Frenchmen while the other carried 
the breakfast coffee to the men who had been 
all night in the trenches. They are good men, 
those cooks!" 

So at last I found out at second hand what 
one German soldier had done to merit the 
bestowal of the Iron Cross. But as we came 
away, I was in doubt on a certain point and, 
for that matter, am still in doubt on it: I am 
in doubt as to which of two men most fitly 
typified the spirit of the German Army in this 
war — the general feeding his men by thousands 
into the maw of destruction because it was an 
order, or the pot-wrestling private soldier, the 
camp cook, going to death with a coffee boiler 
in his hands — because it was an order. 



[225] 



CHAPTER IX 
VIEWING A BATTLE FROM A BALLOON 



SHE was anchored to earth in a good-sized 
field. Woods horizoned the field on 
three of its edges and a sunken road 
bounded it on the fourth. She measured, 
I should say at an offhand guess, seventy-five 
feet from tip to tip lengthwise, and she was 
perhaps twenty feet in diameter through her 
middle. She was a bright yellow in color — 
a varnished, oily-looking yellow — and in shape 
suggestive of a frankfurter. 

At the end of her near the ground and on the 
side that was underneath — for she swung, you 
understand, at an angle — a swollen protu- 
berance showed, as though an air bubble had 
got under the skin of the sausage during the 
packing and made a big blister. She drooped 
weakly amidships, bending and swaying this 
way and that; and, as we came under her 
and looked up, we saw that the skin of the 
belly kept shrinking in and wrinkling up, in 
the unmistakable pangs of acute cramp colic. 
[226] 



VIEWING A BATTLE FROM A BALLOON 

She had a sickly, depleted aspect elsewhere, 
and altogether was most flabby and unreliable 
looking; yet this, as I learned subsequently, 
was her normal appearance. Being in the 
business of spying she practiced deceit, with 
the deliberate intent of seeming to be what, 
emphatically, she was not. She counterfeited 
chronic invalidism and she performed compe- 
tently. 

She was an observation balloon of the pat- 
tern privily chosen by the German General 
Staff, before the beginning of the war, for the 
use of the German Signal Corps. On this par- 
ticular date and occasion she operated at a 
point of the highest strategic importance, that 
point being the center of the German battle 
lines along the River Aisne. 

She had been stationed here now for more 
than a week — that is to say, ever since her 
predecessor was destroyed in a ball of flaming 
fumes as a result of having a bomb flung 
through the flimsy cloth envelope by a coursing 
and accurate aviator of the enemy. No doubt 
she would continue to be stationed here until 
some such mischance befell her too. 

On observation balloons, in time of war, no 
casualty insurance is available at any rate of 
premium. I believe those who ride in them are 
also regarded as unsuitable risks. This was 
highly interesting to hear and, for our jour- 
nalistic purposes, very valuable to know; but, 
speaking personally, I may say that the thing 
[2271 



PATHS OF GLORY 



which most nearly concerned me for the moment 
was this: I had just been invited to take a trip 
aloft in this wabbly great wienerwurst, with its 
painted silk cuticle and its gaseous vitals — 
and had, on impulse, accepted. 

I was informed at the time, and have since 
been reinformed more than once, that I am 
probably the only civilian spectator who has 
enjoyed such a privilege during the present 
European war. Assuredly, to date and to the 
best of my knowledge and belief, I am the 
only civilian who has been so favored by the 
Germans. Well, I trust I am not hoggish. 
Possessing, as it does, this air of uniqueness, 
the distinction is worth much to me personally. 
I would not take anything for the experience; 
but I do not think I shall take it again, even 
if the chance should come my way, which very 
probably it will not. 

It was mid-afternoon; and all day, since 
early breakfast, we had been working our way 
in automobiles toward this destination. Al- 
ready my brain chambered more impressions, 
all jumbled together in a mass, than I could 
possibly hope to get sorted out and graded 
up and classified in a month of trying. Yet, 
in a way, the day had been disappointing; for, 
as I may have set forth before, the nearer we 
came to the actual fighting, the closer in touch 
we got with the battle itself, the less we seemed 
to see of it. 

I take it this is true of nearly all battles 
[2281 



VIEWING A BATTLE FROM A BALLOON 

fought under modern military principles. Ten 
miles in the rear, or even twenty miles, is 
really a better place to be if you are seeking 
to fix in your mind a reasonably full picture 
of the scope and effect and consequences of the 
hideous thing called war. Back there you see 
the new troops going in, girding themselves 
for the grapple as they go; you see the re- 
enforcements coming up; you see the supplies 
hurrying forward, and the spare guns and the 
extra equipment, and all the rest of it; you see, 
and can, after a dim fashion, grasp mentally, 
the thrusting, onward movement of this highly 
scientific and most unromantic industry which 
half the world began practicing in the fall 
of 1914. 

Finally, you see the finished fabrics of the 
trade coming back; and by that I mean the 
dribbling streams of the wounded and, in the 
fields and woods through which you pass, the 
dead, lying in windrows where they fell. At 
the front you see only, for the main part, men 
engaged in the most tedious, the most exacting, 
and seemingly the most futile form of day labor 
— toiling in filth and foulness and a desperate 
driven haste, on a job that many of them will 
never live to see finished — if it is ever finished; 
working under taskmasters who spare them 
not — neither do they spare themselves; putting 
through a dreary contract, whereof the chief 
reward is weariness and the common coinage 
of payment is death outright or death lin- 
[229] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



gering. That is a battle in these days; that 
is war. 

So twistiwise was our route, and so rapidly 
did we pursue it after we left the place where 
we took lunch, that I confess I lost all sense of 
direction. It seemed to me our general course 
was eastward; I discovered afterward it was 
southwesterly. At any rate we eventually 
found ourselves in a road that wound between 
high grassy banks along a great natural terrace 
just below the level of the plateau in front of 
Laon. We saw a few farmhouses, all desolated 
by shellfire and all deserted, and a succession 
of empty fields and patches of woodland. 
None of the natives were in sight. Through 
fear of prying hostile eyes, the Germans had 
seen fit to clear them out of this immediate 
vicinity. Anyhow, a majority of them doubt- 
lessly ran away when fighting first started 
here, three weeks earlier; the Germans had 
got rid of those who remained. Likewise of 
troops there were very few to be seen. We 
did meet one squad of Red Cross men, march- 
ing afoot through the dust. They were all 
fully armed, as is the way with the German 
field-hospital helpers; and, for all I know to 
the contrary, that may be the way with the 
field-hospital helpers of the Allies too. 

Though I have often seen it, the Cross on 

the sleeve-band of a man who bears a revolver 

in his belt, or a rifle on his arm, has always 

struck me as a most incongruous thing. The 

[230] 



VIEWING A BATTLE FROM A BALLOON 

noncommissioned officer in charge of the squad 
— chief orderly I suppose you might call 
him — held by leashes four Red Cross dogs. 

In Belgium, back in August, I had seen so- 
called dog batteries. Going into Louvain on 
the day the Belgian Army, or what was left 
of it, fell back into Brussels, I passed a valley 
where many dogs were hitched to small ma- 
chine guns; and I could not help wondering 
what would happen to the artillery formation, 
and what to the discipline of the pack, if a 
rabbit should choose that moment for darting 
across the battle front. 

These, however, were the first dogs I had 
found engaged in hospital-corps employment. 
They were big, wolfish-looking hounds, shaggy 
and sharp-nosed; and each of the four wore a 
collar of bells on his neck, and a cloth harness 
on his shoulders, with the red Maltese cross 
displayed on its top and sides. Their business 
was to go to the place where fighting had taken 
place and search out the fallen. 

At this business they were reputed to be 
highly efficient. The Germans had found them 
especially useful; for the German field uniform, 
which has the merit of merging into the natural 
background at a short distance, becomes, 
through that very protective coloration, a dis- 
advantage when its wearer drops wounded and 
unconscious on the open field. In a poor light 
the litter bearers might search within a few 
rods of him and never see him; but where the 
[231] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



faulty eyesight fails the nose of the dog sniffs 
the human taint in the air, and the dog makes 
the work of rescue thorough and complete. At 
least we were told so. 

Presently our automobile rounded a bend 
in the road, and the observation balloon, which 
until that moment we had been unable to 
glimpse, by reason of an intervening formation 
of ridges, revealed itself before us. The sudden- 
ness of its appearance was startling. We did 
not see it until we were within a hundred yards 
of it. At once we realized how perfect an 
abiding place this was for a thing which offered 
so fine and looming a target. 

Moreover, the balloon was most effectively 
guarded against attack at close range. We 
became aware of that fact when we dismounted 
from the automobile and were clambering up 
the steep bank alongside. Soldiers materialized 
from everywhere, like dusty specters, but fell 
back, saluting, when they saw that officers 
accompanied us. On advice we had already 
thrown away our lighted cigars; but two non- 
commissioned officers felt it to be their bounden 
duty to warn us against striking matches in 
that neighborhood. You dare not take chances 
with a woven bag that is packed with many 
hundred cubic feet of gas. 

At the moment of our arrival the balloon was 

drawn down so near the earth that its distorted 

bottommost extremity dipped and twisted 

slackly within fifty or sixty feet of the grass. 

[2321 



VIEWING A BATTLE FROM A BALLOON 

The upper end, reaching much farther into the 
air, underwent convulsive writhings and con- 
tortions as an intermittent breeze came over 
the sheltering treetops and buffeted it in puffs. 
Almost beneath the balloon six big draft horses 
stood, hitched in pairs to a stout wagon 
frame on which a huge wooden drum was 
mounted. 

Round this drum a wire cable was coiled, 
and a length of the cable stretched like a snake 
across the field to where it ended in a swivel, 
made fast to the bottom of the riding car. 
It was not, strictly speaking, a riding car. It 
was a straight-up-and-down basket of tough, 
light wicker, no larger and very little deeper 
than an ordinarily fair-sized hamper for soiled 
linen. Indeed, that was what it reminded one 
of — a clothesbasket. 

Grouped about the team and the wagon 
were soldiers to the number of perhaps a third 
of a company. Half a dozen of them stood 
about the basket holding it steady — or trying 
to. Heavy sandbags hung pendentwise about 
the upper rim of the basket, looking very 
much like so many canvased hams; but, even 
with these drags on it and in spite of the grips 
of the men on the guy ropes of its rigging, it 
bumped and bounded uneasily to the con- 
tinual rocking of the gas bag above it. Every 
moment or two it would lift itself a foot or 
so and tilt and jerk, and then come back 
again with a thump that made it shiver. 
[233J 



PATHS OF GLORY 



Of furnishings the interior of the car con- 
tained nothing except a telephone, fixed against 
one side of it; a pair of field glasses, swung 
in a sort of harness; and a strip of tough canvas, 
looped across halfway down in it. The oper- 
ator, when wearied by standing, might sit 
astride this canvas saddle, with his legs cramped 
under him, while he spied out the land with 
his eyes, which would then be just above the 
top of his wicker nest, and while he spoke over 
the telephone. 

The wires of the telephone escaped through 
a hole under his feet and ran to a concealed 
station at the far side of the field which in 
turn communicated with the main exchange 
at headquarters three miles away; which in its 
turn radiated other wires to all quarters of the 
battle front. Now the wires were neatly coiled 
on the ground beside the basket. A sergeant 
stood over them to prevent any careless foot 
from stepping on the precious strands. He 
guarded them as jealously as a hen guards her 
brood. 

The magazine containing retorts of specially 
prepared gas, for recharging the envelope when 
evaporation and leakage had reduced the vol- 
ume below the lifting and floating point, was 
nowhere in sight. It must have been some- 
where near by, but we saw no signs of it. Nor 
did our guides for the day offer to show us its 
whereabouts. However, knowing what I do 
of the German system of doing things, I will 
[234] 



VIEWING A BATTLE FROM A BALLOON 

venture the assertion that it was snugly hidden 
and stoutly protected. 

These details I had time to take in, when 
there came across the field to join us a tall 
young officer with a three weeks' growth of 
stubby black beard on his face. A genial and 
captivating gentleman was Lieutenant Brinkner 
und Meiningen, and I enjoyed my meeting with 
him; and often since that day in my thoughts 
I have wished him well. However, I doubt 
whether he will be living by the time these 
lines see publication. 

It is an exciting life a balloon operator in 
the German Army lives, but it is not, as a 
rule, a long one. Lieutenant Meiningen was 
successor to a man who was burned to death 
in mid-air a week before; and on the day before 
a French airman had dropped a bomb from 
the clouds that missed this same balloon by 
a margin of less than a hundred yards — close 
marksmanship, considering that the airman in 
question was seven or eight thousand feet aloft, 
and moving at the rate of a mile or so a minute 
when he made his cast. 

It was the Lieutenant who said he had au- 
thority to take one of our number up with 
him, and it was I who chanced to be nearest 
to the balloon when he extended the invita- 
tion. Some one — a friend — removed from be- 
tween my teeth the unlighted cigar I held there, 
for fear I might forget and try to light it; 
and somebody else; — a stranger to me — sug- 
[ 235 1 



PATHS OF GLORY 



gested that perhaps I was too heavy for a 
passenger. 

By that time, however, a kindly corporal 
had boosted me up over the rim of the basket 
and helped me to squeeze through the thick 
netting of guy lines; and there I was, standing 
inside that overgrown clotheshamper, which 
came up breast high on me — and Brinkner und 
Meiningen was swinging himself nimbly in be- 
side me. That basket was meant to hold but 
one man. It made a wondrously snug fit for 
two; the both of us being full-sized adults at 
that. We stood back to back; and to address 
the other each must needs speak over his 
shoulder. The canvas saddle was between 
us, dangling against the calves of our legs; 
and the telephone was in front of the lieu- 
tenant, where he could reach the transmitter 
with his lips by stooping a little. 

The soldiers began unhooking the sandbags; 
the sergeant who guarded the telephone wire 
took up a strand of it and held it loosely in his 
hands, ready to pay it out. Under me I felt 
the basket heave gently. Looking up I saw 
that the balloon was no longer a crooked 
sausage. She had become a big, soft, yellow 
summer squash, with an attenuated neck. 
The flaccid abdomen flinched in and puffed 
out, and the snout wabbled to and fro. 

The lieutenant began telling me things in 
badly broken but painstaking English — such 
things, for example, as that the baglike pro- 
[236] 



VIEWING A BATTLE FROM A BALLOON 

tuberance just above our heads, at the bottom 
end of the envelope, contained air, which, being 
heavier than gas, served as a balance to hold 
her head up in the wind and keep her from 
folding in on herself; also, that it was his duty 
to remain aloft, at the end of his tether, as 
long as he could, meantime studying the effect 
of the German shell-fire on the enemy's 
position and telephoning down instructions 
for the better aiming of the guns — a job 
wherein the aeroplane scouts ably reenforced 
him, since they could range at will, whereas 
his position was comparatively fixed and sta- 
tionary. 

Also I remember his saying, with a tinge of 
polite regret in his tone, that he was sorry I had 
not put on a uniform overcoat with shoulder 
straps on it, before boarding the car; because, 
as he took pains to explain, in the event of 
our cable parting and of our drifting over the 
Allies' lines and then descending, he might 
possibly escape, but I should most likely be 
shot on the spot as a spy before I had a chance 
to explain. "However," he added consolingly, 
"those are possibilities most remote. The rope 
is not likely to break; and if it did we both 
should probably be dead before we ever reached 
the earth." 

That last statement sank deep into my con- 
sciousness; but I fear I did not hearken so at- 
tentively as I ought to the continuation of 
the lieutenant's conversation, because, right 
[237] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



in the middle of his remarks, something had 
begun to happen. 

An officer had stepped up alongside to tell 
me that very shortly I should undoubtedly 
be quite seasick — or, rather, skysick — because 
of the pitching about of the basket when the 
balloon reached the end of the cable; and I was 
trying to listen to him with one ear and to 
my prospective traveling companion with the 
other when I suddenly realized that the 
officer's face was no longer on a level with mine. 
It was several feet below mine. No; it was 
not — it was several yards below mine. Now he 
was looking up toward us, shouting out his 
words, with his hands funneled about his 
mouth for a speaking trumpet. And at every 
word he uttered he shrank into himself, grow- 
ing shorter and shorter. 

It was not that we seemed to be moving. 
We seemed to be standing perfectly still, with- 
out any motion of any sort except a tiny 
teetering motion of the hamper-basket, while 
the earth and what was on it fell rapidly away 
from beneath us. At once all sense of per- 
spective became distorted. 

When on the roof of a tall building this dis- 
tortion had never seemed to me so great. I 
imagine this is because the building remains 
stationary and a balloon moves. Almost di- 
rectly below us was one of our party, wearing 
a soft hat with a flattish brim. It appeared 
to me that almost instantly his shoulders and 
[238] 



VIEWING A BATTLE FROM A BALLOON 

body and legs vanished. Nothing remained 
of him but his hat, which looked exactly like 
a thumb tack driven into a slightly tilted 
drawing board, the tilted drawing board being 
the field. The field seemed sloped now, in- 
stead of flat. 

Across the sunken road was another field. 
Its owner, I presume, had started to turn it 
up for fall planting, when the armies came along 
and chased him away; so there remained a wide 
plowed strip, and on each side of it a narrower 
strip of unplowed earth. Even as I peered 
downward at it, this field was transformed 
into a width of brown corduroy trimmed with 
green velvet. 

For a rudder we carried a long, flapping 
clothesline arrangement, like the tail of a kite, 
to the lower end of which were threaded seven 
yellow-silk devices suggesting inverted sun- 
shades without handles. These things must 
have been spaced on the tail at equal distances 
apart, but as they rose from the earth and 
followed after us, whipping in the wind, the 
uppermost one became a big umbrella turned 
inside out; the second was half of a pumpkin; 
the third was a yellow soup plate; the fourth 
was a poppy bloom; and the remaining three 
were just amber beads of diminishing sizes. 

Probably it took longer, but if you asked 

me I should say that not more than two or 

three minutes had passed before the earth 

stopped slipping away and we fetched up 

[2391 



PATHS OF GLORY 



with a profound and disconcerting jerk. The 
balloon had reached the tip of her hitch line. 

She rocked and twisted and bent half double 
in the pangs of a fearful tummy-ache, and at 
every paroxysm the car lurched in sympathy, 
only to be brought up short by the pull of the 
taut cable; so that we two, wedged in together 
as we were, nevertheless jostled each other 
violently. I am a poor sailor, both by instinct 
and training. By rights and by precedents I 
should have been violently ill on the instant; 
but I did not have time to be ill. 

My fellow traveler all this while was pointing 
out this thing and that to me — showing how 
the telephone operated; how his field glasses 
poised just before his eyes, being swung and 
balanced on a delicately adjusted suspended 
pivot; telling me how on a perfectly clear day 
— this October day was slightly hazy — we 
could see the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and the 
Cathedral at Rheims; gyrating his hands to 
explain the manner in which the horses, trot- 
ting away from us as we climbed upward, had 
given to the drum on the wagon a reverse 
motion, so that the cable was payed out evenly 
and regularly. But I am afraid I did not listen 
closely. My eyes were so busy that my ears 
loafed on the job. 

For once in my life — and doubtlessly only 

once — I saw now understandingly a battle front. 

It was spread before me — lines and dots and 

dashes on a big green and brown and yellow 

[2401 



VIEWING A BATTLE FROM A BALLOON 

map. Why, the whole thing was as plain as a 
chart. I had a reserved seat for the biggest 
show on earth. 

To be sure it was a gallery seat, for the ter- 
race from which we started stood fully five 
hundred feet above the bottom of the valley, 
and we had ascended approximately seven 
hundred feet above that, giving us an altitude 
of, say, twelve hundred feet in all above the 
level of the river; but a gallery seat suited me. 
It suited me perfectly. The great plateau, 
stretching from the high hill behind us, to the 
river in front of us, portrayed itself, when 
viewed from aloft, as a shallow bowl, alter- 
nately grooved by small depressions and corru- 
gated by small ridges. Here and there were 
thin woodlands, looking exactly like scrubby 
clothesbrushes. The fields were checkered 
squares and oblongs, and a ruined village in 
the distance seemed a jumbled handful of 
children's gray and red blocks. 

The German batteries appeared now to be 
directly beneath us — some of them, though in 
reality I imagine the nearest one must have 
been nearly a mile away on a bee line. They 
formed an irregular horseshoe, with the open 
end of it toward us. There was a gap in the 
horseshoe where the calk should have been. 
The German trenches, for the most part, lay 
inside the encircling lines of batteries. In 
shape they rather suggested a U turned upside 
down; yet it was hard to ascribe to them any 
[241] 



PATHS OP GLORY 



real shape, since they zigzagged so crazily. 
I could tell, though, there was sanity in this 
seeming madness, for nearly every trench was 
joined at an acute angle with its neighbor; so 
that a man, or a body of men, starting at the 
rear, out of danger, might move to the very 
front of the fighting zone and all the time be 
well sheltered. So far as I could make out there 
were but few breaks in the sequence of com- 
munications. One of these breaks was almost 
directly in front of me as I stood facing the 
south. 

The batteries of the Allies and their infantry 
trenches, being so much farther away, were 
less plainly visible. I could discern their loca- 
tion without being able to grasp their general 
arrangement. Between the nearer infantry 
trenches of the two opposing forces were tiny 
dots in the ground, each defined by an infini- 
tesimal hillock of yellow earth heaped before 
it — observation pits these, where certain picked 
men, who do not expect to live very long any- 
way, hide themselves away to keep tally on 
the effect of the shells, which go singing past 
just over their heads to fall among the enemy, 
who may be only a few hundred feet or a few 
hundred yards away from the observers. 

It was an excessively busy afternoon among 
the guns. They spoke continually — now this 
battery going, now that; now two or three or a 
dozen together — and the sound of them came 
up to us in claps and roars like summer thun- 
[242] 



VIEWING A BATTLE FROM A BALLOON 

der. Sometimes, when a battery close by let 
go, I could watch the thin, shreddy trail of 
fine smoke that marked the arched flight of a 
shrapnel bomb, almost from the very mouth 
of the gun clear to where it burst out into a 
fluffy white powder puff inside the enemy's 
position. 

Contrariwise, I could see how shells from the 
enemy crossed those shells in the air and curved 
downward to scatter their iron sprays among 
the Germans. In the midst of all this would 
come a sharp, spattering sound, as though hail 
in the heighth of the thunder shower had fallen 
on a tin roof; and that, I learned, meant in- 
fantry firing in a trench somewhere. 

For a while I watched some German soldiers 
moving forward through a criss-cross of 
trenches; I took them to be fresh men going 
in to relieve other men who had seen a period 
of service under fire. At first they suggested 
moles crawling through plow furrows; then, as 
they progressed onward, they shrank to the 
smallness of gray grub-worms, advancing one 
behind another. My eye strayed beyond them 
a fair distance and fell on a row of tiny scarlet 
dots, like cochineal bugs, showing minutely 
but clearly against the green-yellow face of a 
ridgy field well inside the forward batteries 
of the French and English. At that same 
instant the lieutenant must have seen the crawl- 
ing red line too. He pointed to it. 

"Frenchmen," he said; "French infantry - 
[243] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



men's trousers. One cannot make out their 
coats, but their red trousers show as they 
wriggle forward on their faces." 

Better than ever before I realized the idiocy 
of sending men to fight in garments that make 
vivid targets of them. 

My companion may have come up for pleas- 
ure, but if business obtruded itself on him he 
did not neglect it. He bent to his telephone 
and spoke briskly into it. He used German, 
but, after a fashion, I made out what he said. 
He was directing the attention of somebody to 
the activities of those red trousers. 

I intended to see what would follow on this, 
but at this precise moment a sufficiently inter- 
esting occurrence came to pass at a place 
within much clearer eye range. The gray grub- 
worms had shoved ahead until they were gray 
ants; and now all the ants concentrated into 
a swarm and, leaving the trenches, began to 
move in a slanting direction toward a patch of 
woods far over to our left. Some of them, I 
think, got there, some of them did not. Cer- 
tain puff-balls of white smoke, and one big 
smudge of black smoke, which last signified 
a bomb of high explosives, broke over them 
and among them, hiding all from sight for a 
space of seconds. Dust clouds succeeded the 
smoke; then the dust lifted slowly. Those 
ants were not to be seen. They had altogether 
vanished. It was as though an anteater had 
come forth invisibly and eaten them all up. 
[2441 



VIEWING A BATTLE FROM A BALLOON 

Marveling at this phenomenon and unable 
to convince myself that I had seen men de- 
stroyed, and not insects, I turned my head 
south again to watch the red ladybugs in the 
field. Lo! They were gone too! Either they 
had reached shelter or a painful thing had 
befallen them. 

The telephone spoke a brisk warning. I 
think it made a clicking sound. I am sure it 
did not ring; but in any event it called attention 
to itself. The other man clapped his ear to 
the receiver and took heed to the word that 
came up the dangling wire, and snapped back 
an answer. 

"I think we should return at once," he said 
to me over his shoulder. "Are you sufficiently 
wearied?" 

I was not sufficiently wearied — I wasn't 
wearied at all — but he was the captain of the 
ship and I was not even paying for my passage. 

The car jerked beneath our unsteady feet 
and heeled over, and I had the sensation of 
being in an elevator that has started down- 
ward suddenly, and at an angle to boot. The 
balloon resisted the pressure from below. It 
curled up its tail like a fat bumblebee trying 
to sting itself, and the guy ropes, to which I 
held with both hands, snapped in imitation 
of the rigging of a sailboat in a fair breeze. 
Plainly the balloon wished to remain where 
it was or go farther; but the pull of the cable 
was steady and hard, and the world began to 
[245] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



rise up to meet us. Nearing the earth it 
struck me that we were making a remarkably 
speedy return. I craned my neck to get a view 
of what was directly beneath. 

The six-horse team was advancing toward 
us at a brisk canter and the drum turned fast, 
taking up the slack of the tether; but, as though 
not satisfied with this rate of progress, several 
soldiers were running back and jumping up 
to haul in the rope. The sergeant who took 
care of the telephone was hard put to it to 
coil down the twin wires. He skittered about 
over the grass with the liveliness of a cricket. 

Many soiled hands grasped the floor of our 
hamper and eased the jar of its contact with 
the earth. Those same hands had redraped 
the rim with sandbags, and had helped us to 
clamber out from between the stay ropes, 
when up came the young captain who spelled 
the lieutenant as an aerial spy. He came at 
a run. Between the two of them ensued a 
sharp interchange of short German sentences. 
I gathered the sense of what passed. 

"I don't see it now," said, in effect, my late 
traveling mate, staring skyward and turning 
his head. 

"Nor do I," answered the captain. "I 
thought it was yonder." He flirted a thumb 
backward and upward over his shoulder. 

"Are you sure you saw it?" 

"No, not sure," said the captain. "I called 
you down at the first alarm, and right after 
[246] 



VIEWING A BATTLE FROM A BALLOON 

that it disappeared, I think; but I shall make 
sure." 

He snapped an order to the soldiers and 
vaulted nimbly into the basket. The horses 
turned about and moved off and the balloon 
rose. As for the lieutenant, he spun round 
and ran toward the edge of the field, fumbling 
at his belt for his private field glasses as he 
ran. Wondering what all this pother was 
about — though I had a vague idea regarding 
its meaning — I watched the ascent. 

I should say the bag had reached a height 
of five hundred feet when, behind me, a hun- 
dred yards or so away, a soldier shrieked out 
excitedly. Farther along another voice took 
up the outcry. From every side of the field 
came shouts. The field was ringed with clamor. 
It dawned on me that this spot was even more 
efficiently guarded than I had conceived it 
to be. 

The driver of the wagon swung his lum- 
bering team about with all the strength of his 
arms, and back again came the six horses, 
galloping now. So thickly massed were the 
men who snatched at the cable, and so eagerly 
did they grab for it, that the simile of a hot 
handball scrimmage flashed into my thoughts. 
I will venture that balloon never did a faster 
homing job than it did then. 

Fifty men were pointing aloft now, all of 
them crying out as they pointed: 
, "Flyer! French flyer!" 
[247] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



I saw it. It was a monoplane. It had, I 
judged, just emerged from a cloudbank to 
the southward. It was heading directly to- 
ward our field. It was high up — so high up 
that I felt momentarily amazed that all those 
Germans could distinguish it as a French flyer 
rather than as an English flyer at that distance. 

As I looked, and as all of us looked, the bal- 
loon basket hit the earth and was made fast; 
and in that same instant a cannon boomed 
somewhere well over to the right. Even as 
someone who knew sang out to us that this 
was the balloon cannon in the German aviation 
field back of the town opening up, a tiny ball 
of smoke appeared against the sky, seemingly 
quite close to the darting flyer, and blossomed 
out with downy, dainty white petals, like a 
flower. 

The monoplane veered, wheeled and began 
to drive in a wriggling, twisting course. The 
balloon cannon spoke again. Four miles away, 
to the eastward, its fellow in another aviation 
camp let go, and the sound of its discharge 
came to us faintly but distinctly. Another 
smoke flower unfolded in the heavens, some- 
what below the darting airship. 

Both guns were in action now. Each fired 
at six-second intervals. All about the flitting 
target the smokeballs burst — above it, below 
it, to this side of it and to that. They polka- 
dotted the heavens in the area through which 
the Frenchman scudded. They looked like 
[£481 



VIEWING A BATTLE FROM A BALLOON 

a bed of white water lilies and he like a black 
dragonfly skimming among the lilies. It was 
a pretty sight and as thrilling a one as I have 
ever seen. 

I cannot analyze my emotions as I viewed 
the spectacle, let alone try to set them down 
on paper. Alongside of this, big-game hunting 
was a commonplace thing, for this was big- 
game hunting of a magnificent kind, new to 
the world — revolving cannon, with a range of 
from seven to eight thousand feet, trying to 
bring down a human being out of the very 
clouds. 

He ran for his life. Once I thought they 
had him. A shell burst seemingly quite close 
to him, and his machine dipped far to one 
side and dropped through space at that angle 
for some hundreds of feet apparently. 

A yell of exultation rose from the watching 
Germans, who knew that an explosion close 
to an aeroplane is often sufficient, through 
the force of air concussion alone, to crumple 
the flimsy wings and bring it down, even 
though none of the flying shrapnel from the 
bursting bomb actually touch the operator or 
the machine. 

However, they whooped their joy too soon. 
The flyer righted, rose, darted confusingly to 
the right, then to the left, and then bored 
straight into a woolly white cloudrack and was 
gone. The moment it disappeared the two 
balloon cannon ceased firing; and I, taking 
[249J 



PATHS OF GLORY 



stock of my own sensations, found myself 
quivering all over and quite hoarse. 

I must have done some yelling myself; but 
whether I rooted for the flyer to get away 
safely or for the cannon to hit him, I cannot 
for the life of me say. I can only trust that I 
preserved my neutrality and rooted for both. 

Subsequently I decided in my own mind 
that from within the Allies' lines the French- 
man saw us — meaning the lieutenant and 
myself — in the air, and came forth with in- 
tent to bombard us from on high; that, seeing 
us descend, he hid in a cloud ambush, ven- 
turing out once more, with his purpose re- 
newed, when the balloon reascended, bearing 
the captain. I liked to entertain that idea, 
because it gave me a feeling of having shared 
to some degree in a big adventure. 

As for the captain and the lieutenant, they 
advanced no theories whatever. The thing 
was all in the day's work to them. It had hap- 
pened before. I have no doubt it has happened 
many times since. 



[250] 



CHAPTER X 
IN THE TRENCHES BEFORE RHEIMS 



AFTER my balloon-riding experience 
what followed was in the nature of an 
anticlimax — was bound to be anti- 
climactic. Yet the remainder of the 
afternoon was not without action. Not an 
hour later, as we stood in a battery of small 
field guns — guns I had watched in operation 
from my lofty gallery seat — another flyer, or 
possibly the same one we had already seen, 
appeared in the sky, coming now in a long 
swinging sweep from the southwest, and making 
apparently for the very spot where our party 
had stationed itself to watch the trim little 
battery perform. 

It had already dropped some form of deadly 
souvenir we judged, for we saw a jet of black 
smoke go geysering up from a woodland where 
a German corps commander had his field head- 
quarters, just after the airship passed over 
that particular patch of timber. As it swirled 
[2511 



PATHS OF GLORY 



down the wind in our direction the vigilant 
balloon guns again got its range, and, to the 
throbbing tune of their twin boomings, it 
ducked and dodged away, executing irregular 
and hurried upward spirals until the cloud- 
fleece swallowed it up. 

The driver of that monoplane was a per- 
sistent chap. I am inclined to believe he was 
the selfsame aviator who ventured well inside 
the German lines the following morning. 
While at breakfast in the prefecture at Laon 
we heard the cannoneer-sharpshooters when 
they opened on him; and as we ran to the win- 
dows — we Americans, I mean, the German 
officers breakfasting with us remaining to finish 
their coffee — we saw a colonel, whom we had 
met the night before, sitting on a bench in the 
old prefecture flower garden and looking up 
into the skies through the glasses that every 
German officer, of whatsoever degree, carries 
with him at all times. 

He looked and looked; then he lowered his 
glasses and put them back into their case, 
and took up the book he had been reading. 

"He got away again," said the colonel re- 
gretfully, seeing us at the window. "Plucky 
fellow, that! I hope we kill him soon. The 
airmen say he is a Frenchman, but my guess 
is that he is English." And then he went on 
reading. 

Getting back to the afternoon before, I must 
add that it was not a bomb which the flying 
[2521 



IN THE TRENCHES BEFORE RHEIMS 

man threw into the edge of the woods. He 
had a surprise for his German adversaries that 
day. Soon after we left the stand of the 
field guns a civilian Red Cross man halted 
our machines to show us a new device 
for killing men. It was a steel dart, of the 
length and thickness of a fountain pen, and of 
much the same aspect. It was pointed like 
a needle at one end, and at the other was 
fashioned into a tiny rudder arrangement, 
the purpose of this being to hold it upright — 
point downward — as it descended. It was an 
innocent-looking device — that dart; but it was 
deadlier than it seemed. 

"That flyer at whom our guns were firing a 
while ago dropped this," explained the civilian. 
"He pitched out a bomb that must have con- 
tained hundreds of these darts; and the bomb 
was timed to explode a thousand or more feet 
above the earth and scatter the darts. Some 
of them fell into a cavalry troop on the road 
leading to La Fere. 

"Hurt anyone? Ach, but yes! Hurt many 
and killed several — both men and horses. 
One dart hit a trooper on top of his head. It 
went through his helmet, through his skull, 
his brain, his neck, his body, his leg — all the 
way through him lengthwise it went. It came 
out of his Teg, split open his horse's flank, and 
stuck in the hard road. 

"I myself saw the man afterward. He 
died so quickly that his hand still held his 
[253] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



bridle rein after he fell from the saddle; and 
the horse dragged him — his corpse, rather — 
many feet before the fingers relaxed." 

The officers who were with us were tre- 
mendously interested — not interested, mind 
you, in the death of that trooper, spitted 
from the heavens by a steel pencil, but in- 
terested in the thing that had done the work. 
It was the first dart they had seen. Indeed, 
I think until then this weapon had not been 
used against the Germans in this particular 
area of the western theater of war. These 
officers passed it about, fingering it in turn, 
and commenting on the design of it and the 
possibilities of its use. 

"Typically French," the senior of them said 
at length, handing it back to its owner, the 
Red Cross man — "a very clever idea too; but 
it might be bettered, I think." He pondered 
a moment, then added, with the racial com- 
placence that belongs to a German military 
man when he considers military matters: "No 
doubt we shall adopt the notion; but we'll 
improve on the pattern and the method of 
discharging it. The French usually lead the 
way in aerial inventions, but the Germans 
invariably perfect them." 

The day wound up and rounded out most 
fittingly with a trip eastward along the lines 
to the German siege investments in front of 
Rheims. We ran for a while through damaged 
French hamlets, each with its soldier garrison 
[254] 



IN THE TRENCHES BEFORE RHEIMS 

to make up for the inhabitants who had fled; 
and then, a little later, through a less well- 
populated district. In the fields, for long 
stretches, nothing stirred except pheasants, 
feeding on the neglected grain, and big, noisy 
magpies. The roads were empty, too, except 
that there were wrecked shells of automobiles 
and bloated carcasses of dead troop horses. 
When the Germans, in their campaigning, 
smash up an automobile — and traveling at the 
rate they do there must be many smashed — 
they capsize it at the roadside, strip it of its 
tires, draw off the precious gasoline, pour oil 
over it and touch a match to it. What re- 
mains offers no salvage to friend, or enemy 
either. 

The horses rot where they drop unless the 
country people choose to put the bodies under- 
ground. We counted the charred cadavers of 
fifteen automobiles and twice as many dead 
horses during that ride. The smell of horse- 
flesh spoiled the good air. When passing 
through a wood the smell was always heavier. 
We hoped it was only dead horses we smelled 
there. 

When there has been fighting in France 
or Belgium, almost any thicket will give up 
hideous grisly secrets to the man who goes 
searching there. Men sorely wounded in the 
open share one trait at least with the lower 
animals. The dying creature — whether man 
or beast — dreads to lie and die in the naked 
[255] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



field. It drags itself in among the trees if it 
has the strength. 

I believe every woodland in northern France 
was a poison place, and remained so until the 
freezing of winter sealed up its abominations 
under ice and frost. 

Nearing Rheims we turned into a splendid 
straight highway bordered by trees, where the 
late afternoon sunlight filtered through the dead 
leaves, which still hung from the boughs and 
dappled *the yellow road with black splotches, 
until it made you think of jaguar pelts. Mid- 
way of our course here we met troops moving 
toward us in force. First, as usual, came scouts 
on bicycles and motorcycles. One young chap 
had woven sheaves of dahlias and red peonies 
into the frame of his wheel, and through the 
clump of quivering blossoms the barrel of his 
rifle showed, like a black snake in a bouquet. 
He told us that troops were coming behind, 
going to the extreme right wing — a good many 
thousands of troops, he thought. Ordinarily 
Uhlans would have followed behind the bicycle 
men, but this time a regiment of Brunswick 
Hussars formed the advance guard, riding four 
abreast and making a fine show, what with their 
laced gray jackets and their lanes of nodding 
lances, and their tall woolly busbies, each with 
its grinning brass death's-head set into the 
front of it. 

There was a blithe young officer who in- 
sisted on wheeling out of the line and halting 
[|256] 



IN THE TRENCHES BEFORE RHEIMS 

us, and passing the time of day with us. I im- 
agine he wanted to exercise his small stock of 
English words. Well, it needed the exercise. 
The skull-and-bones poison label on his cap 
made a wondrous contrast with the smiling eyes 
and the long, humorous, wrinkled-up nose 
below it. 

"A miserable country," he said, with a 
sweep of his arm which comprehended all 
Northwestern Europe, from the German bor- 
der to the sea — "so little there is to eat! My 
belly — she is mostly empty always. But on 
the yesterday I have the much great fortune. 
I buy me a swine — what you call him? — a 
pork? Ah, yes; a pig. I buy me a pig. He 
is a living pig; very noisy, as you say — very 
loud. I bring him twenty kilometers in an 
automobile, and all the time he struggle to be 
free; and he cry out all the time. It is very 
droll — not? — me and the living pig, which 
ride, both together, twenty kilometers!" 

We took some letters from him to his mother 
and sweetheart, to be mailed when we got 
back on German soil; and he spurred on, beam- 
ing back at us and waving his free hand over 
his head. 

For half an hour or so, we, traveling rap- 
idly, passed the column, which was made up 
of cavalry, artillery and baggage trains. I sup- 
pose the infantry was going by another road. 
The dragoons sang German marching songs 
as they rode by, but the artillerymen were a 
[257] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



dour and silent lot for the most part. Re- 
peatedly I noticed that the men who worked 
the big German guns were rarely so cheerful 
as the men who belonged to the other wings 
of the service; certainly it was true in this in- 
stance. 

We halted two miles north of Rheims in 
the front line of the German works. Here 
was a little shattered village; its name, I 
believe, was Brimont. And here, also, com- 
manding the road, stood a ruined fortress 
of an obsolete last-century pattern. Shellfire 
had battered it into a gruel of shattered red 
masonry; but German officers were camped 
within its more habitable parts, and light guns 
were mounted in the moat. 

The trees thereabout had been mowed down 
by the French artillery from within the city, 
so that the highway was littered with their 
tops. Also, the explosives had dug big gouges 
in the earth. Wherever you looked you saw 
that the soil was full of small, raggedy craters. 
Shrapnel was dropping intermittently in the 
vicinity; therefore we left our cars behind the 
shelter of the ancient fort and proceeded cau- 
tiously afoot until we reached the frontmost 
trenches. 

Evidently the Germans counted on staying 
there a good while. The men had dug out 
caves in the walls of the trenches, bedding 
them with straw and fitting them with doors 
taken from the wreckage of the houses of the 
[2581 



IN THE TRENCHES BEFORE RHEIMS 

village. We inspected one of these shelters. 
It had earthen walls and a sod roof, fairly 
water-tight, and a green window shutter to rest 
against the entrance for a windbreak. Six 
men slept here, and the wag of the squad had 
taken chalk and lettered the words "Kaiserhof 
Cafe" on the shutter. 

The trenches were from seven to eight feet 
deep; but by climbing up into the little scarps 
of the sharpshooters and resting our elbows 
in niches in the earth, meantime keeping our 
heads down to escape the attentions of certain 
Frenchmen who were reported to be in a wood 
half a mile away, we could, with the aid of 
our glasses, make out the buildings in Rheims, 
some of which were then on fire — particularly 
the great Cathedral. 

Viewed from that distance it did not appear 
to be badly damaged. One of the towers had 
apparently been shorn away and the roof of 
the nave was burned — we could tell that. 
We were too far away of course to judge of the 
injury to the carvings and to the great rose 
window. 

Already during that week, from many 
sources, we had heard the Germans' version 
of the shelling of Rheims Cathedral, their 
claim being that they purposely spared the 
pile from the bombardment until they found 
the defenders had signal men in the towers; 
that twice they sent officers, under flags of 
truce, to urge the French to withdraw their 
[259] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



signalers; and only fired on the building when 
both these warnings had been disregarded, 
ceasing to fire as soon as they had driven the 
enemy from the towers. 

I do not vouch for this story; but we heard 
it very frequently. Now, from one of the 
young officers who had escorted us into the 
trench, we were hearing it all over again, with 
elaborations, when a shrapnel shell from the 
town dropped and burst not far behind us, 
and rifle bullets began to plump into the 
earthen bank a little to the right of us; so we 
promptly went away from there. 

We were noncombatants and nowise con- 
cerned in the existing controversy; but we 
remembered the plaintive words of the Chinese 
Minister at Brussels when he called on our 
Minister — Brand Whitlock — to ascertain what 
Whitlock would advise doing in case the ad- 
vancing Germans fired on the city. Whitlock 
suggested to his Oriental brother that he retire 
to his official residence and hoist the flag of 
his country over it, thereby making it neutral 
and protected territory. 

"But, Mister Whitlock," murmured the 
puzzled Chinaman, "the cannon — he has no 
eyes!" 

We rode back to Laon through the falling 
dusk. The western sky was all a deep saffron 
pink — the color of a salmon's belly — and we 
could hear the constant blaspheming of the 
big siege guns, taking up the evening cannonade 
[260] 



IN THE TRENCHES BEFORE RHEIMS 

along the center. Pretty soon we caught up 
with the column that was headed for the right 
wing. At that hour it was still in motion, 
which probably meant forced marching for an 
indefinite time. Viewed against the sunset 
yellow, the figures of the dragoons stood up 
black and clean, as conventionalized and reg- 
ular as though they had all been stenciled on 
that background. Seeing next the round, 
spiked helmets of the cannoneers outlined in 
that weird half-light, I knew of what those 
bobbing heads reminded me. They were like 
pictures of Roman centurions. 

Within a few minutes the afterglow lost its 
yellowish tone and burned as a deep red flare. 
As we swung off into a side road the columns 
were headed right into that redness, and turning 
to black cinder-shapes as they rode. It was as 
though they marched into a fiery furnace, tread- 
ing the crimson paths of glory — which are not 
glorious and probably never were, but which 
lead most unerringly to the grave. 

A week later, when we learned what had 
happened on the right wing, and of how the 
Germans had fared there under the battering 
of the Allies, the thought of that open furnace 
door came back to me. I think of it yet — 
often. 



[261] 



CHAPTER XI 
WAR DE LUXE 



I THINK," said a colonel of the ordnance 
department as we came out into the open 
after a good but a hurried and fly-ridden 
breakfast — "I think," he said in his ex- 
cellent Saxonized English, "that it would be 
as well to look at our telephone exchange 
first of all. It perhaps might prove of some 
small interest to you." With that he led the 
way through a jumble of corridors to a far cor- 
ner of the Prefecture of Laon, perching high 
on the Hill of Laon and forming for the moment 
the keystone of the arch of the German center. 
So that was how the most crowded day in a 
reasonably well-crowded newspaperman's life be- 
gan for me — with a visit to a room which had in 
other days been somebody's reception parlor. 
We came upon twelve soldier-operators sitting 
before portable switchboards with metal trans- 
mitters clamped upon their heads, giving and tak- 
ing messages to and from all the corners and 
[262] 



WAR DE LUXE 



crannies of the mid-battle-front. This little room 
was the solar plexus of the army. To it all the 
tingling nerves of the mighty organism ran and 
in it all the ganglia centered. At two sides of 
the room the walls were laced with silk-covered 
wires appliqued as thickly and as closely and 
as intricately as the threads in old point lace, 
and over these wires the gray-coated operators 
could talk — and did talk pretty constantly — 
with all the trenches and all the batteries and 
all the supply camps and with the generals 
of brigades and of divisions and of corps. 

One wire ran upstairs to the Over-General's 
sleeping quarters and ended, so we were told, 
in a receiver that hung upon the headboard of 
his bed. Another stretched, by relay points, 
to Berlin, and still another ran to the head- 
quarters of the General Staff where the Kaiser 
was, somewhere down the right wing; and so 
on and so forth. If war is a business these 
times instead of a chivalric calling, then surely 
this was the main office and clearing house of 
the business. 

To our novice eyes the wires seemed snarled 
— snarled inextricably, hopelessly, eternally — 
and we said as much, but the ordnance colonel 
said behind this apparent disorder a most 
careful and particular orderliness was hidden 
away. Given an hour's notice, these busy men 
who wore those steel vises clamped upon their 
ears could disconnect the lines, pull down and 
reel in the wires, pack the batteries and the 
[263] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



exchanges, and have the entire outfit loaded 
upon automobiles for speedy transmission else- 
where. Having seen what I had seen of the 
German military system, I could not find it 
in my heart to doubt this. Miracles had al- 
ready become commonplaces; what might have 
been epic once was incidental now. I heark- 
ened and believed. 

At his command a sergeant plugged in cer- 
tain stops upon a keyboard and then when 
the Colonel, taking a hand telephone up from 
a table, had talked into it in German he passed 
it into my hands. 

"The captain at the other end of the line 
knows English," he said. "I've just told him 
you wish to speak with him for a minute." 

I pressed the rubber disk to my ear. 

"Hello!" I said. 

"Hello!" came back the thin-strained an- 
swer. "This is such and such a trench" — 
giving the number — "in front of Cerny. What 
do you want to know?" 

"What's the news there?" I stammered 
fatuously. 

A pleasant little laugh tinkled through the 
strainer. 

"Oh, it's fairly quiet now," said the voice. 
"Yesterday afternoon shrapnel fire rather 
mussed us up, but to-day nothing has hap- 
pened. We're just lying quiet and enjoying 
the fine weather. We've had much rain lately 
and my men are enjoying the change." 
[264] 



WAR DE LUXE 



So that was all the talk I had with a man 
who had for weeks been living in a hole in the 
ground with a ditch for an exercise ground 
and the brilliant prospects of a violent death 
for his hourly and daily entertainment. After- 
ward when it was too late I thought of a 
number of leading questions which I should 
have put to that captain. Undoubtedly there 
was a good story in him could you get it out. 

We came through a courtyard at the north 
side of the building, and the courtyard was 
crowded with automobiles of all the known 
European sizes and patterns and shapes — auto- 
mobiles for scout duty, with saw-edged steel 
prows curving up over the drivers' seats to 
catch and cut dangling wires; automobiles 
fitted as traveling pharmacies and needing 
only red-and-green lights to be regular pre- 
scription drug stores; automobile-ambulances 
rigged with stretchers and first-aid kits; auto- 
mobiles for carrying ammunition and capable 
of moving at tremendous speed for tremendous 
distances; automobile machine guns or machine- 
gun automobiles, just as suits you; automobile 
cannon; and an automobile mail wagon, all 
holed inside, like honeycomb, with two field- 
postmen standing up in it, back to back, 
sorting out the contents of snugly packed 
pouches; and every third letter was not a 
letter, strictly speaking, at all, but a small 
flat parcel containing chocolate or cigars or 
handkerchiefs or socks or even light sweaters — 
[2651 



PATHS OF GLORY 



such gifts as might be sent to the soldiers, 
stamp-free, from any part of the German Em- 
pire. I wonder how men managed to wage war 
in the days before the automobile. 

Two waiting cars received our party and 
our guides and our drivers, and we went cork- 
screwing down the hill, traversing crooked 
ways that were astonishingly full of German 
soldiers and astonishingly free of French towns- 
people. Either the citizens kept to their 
closed-up houses or, having run away at the 
coming of the enemy, they had not yet dared 
to return, although so far as I might tell there 
was no danger of their being mistreated by 
the gray-backs. Reaching the plain which is 
below the city we streaked westward, our des- 
tination being the field wireless station. 

Nothing happened on the way except that 
we overtook a file of slightly wounded prison- 
ers who, having been treated at the front, were 
now bound for a prison in a convent yard, 
where they would stay until a train carried 
them off to Minister or Diisseldorf for confine- 
ment until the end of the war. I counted them. 
— two English Tommies, two French officers, 
one lone Belgian — how he got that far down 
into France nobody could guess — and twenty- 
eight French cannoneers and infantrymen, in- 
cluding some North Africans. Every man Jack 
of them was bandaged either about the head 
or about the arms, or else he favored an injured 
leg as he hobbled slowly on. Eight guards 
[266] 



WAR DE LUXE 



were nursing them along; their bayonets were 
socketed in their carbine barrels. No doubt 
the magazines of the carbines were packed 
with those neat brass capsules which carry 
doses of potential death; but the guards, except 
for the moral effect of the thing, might just 
as well have been bare-handed. None of the 
prisoners could have run away even had he 
been so minded. The poor devils were almost 
past walking, let alone running. They wouldn't 
even look up as we went by them. 

The day is done of the courier who rode 
horseback with orders in his belt and was 
winged in mid-flight; and the day of the 
secret messenger who tried to creep through 
the hostile picket lines with cipher dispatches 
in his shoe, and was captured and ordered 
shot at sunrise, is gone, too, except in Civil 
War melodramas. Modern military science 
has wiped them out along with most of the 
other picturesque fol-de-rols of the old game 
of war. Bands no longer play the forces into 
the fight — indeed I have seen no more bands 
afield with the dun-colored files of the Ger- 
mans than I might count on the fingers of my 
two hands; and flags, except on rare show-off 
occasions, do not float above the heads of the 
columns; and officers dress as nearly as possible 
like common soldiers; and the courier's work 
is done with much less glamour but with in- 
finitely greater dispatch and certainty by the 
telephone, and by the aeroplane man, and 
[2671 



PATHS OF GLORY 



most of all by the air currents of the wireless 
equipment. We missed the gallant courier, 
but then the wireless was worth seeing too. 

It stood in a trampled turnip field not very 
far beyond the ruined Porte St. Martin at the 
end of the Rue St. Martin, and before we came 
to it we passed the Monument des Instituteurs, 
erected in 1899 — as the inscription upon it told 
us — by a grateful populace to the memory of 
three school teachers of Laon who, for having 
raised a revolt of students and civilians against 
the invader in the Franco-Prussian War, were 
taken and bound and shot against a wall, in 
accordance with the system of dealing with 
ununiformed enemies which the Germans de- 
veloped hereabouts in 1870 and perfected here- 
abouts in 1914. A faded wreath, which evi- 
dently was weeks old, lay at the bronze feet 
of the three figures. But the institute behind 
the monument was an institute no longer. It 
had become, over night as it were, a lazaret 
for the wounded. Above its doors the Red 
Cross flag and the German flag were crossed — 
emblems of present uses and present propri- 
etorship. Also many convalescent German 
soldiers sunned themselves upon the railing 
about the statue. They seemed entirely at 
home. When the Germans take a town they 
mark it with their own mark, as cattlemen in 
Texas used to mark a captured maverick; 
after which to all intents it becomes German. 
We halted a moment here. 
[268] 



WAR DE LUXE 



"That's French enough for you," said the 
young officer who was riding with us, turning 
in his seat to speak — "putting up a monument 
to glorify three francs-tireurs. In Germany 
the people would not be allowed to do such a 
thing. But it is not humanly conceivable 
that they would have such a wish. We revere 
soldiers who die for the Fatherland, not 
men who refuse to enlist when the call comes 
and yet take up arms to make a guerrilla 
warfare." 

Which remark, considering the circum- 
stances and other things, was sufficiently 
typical for all purposes, as I thought at the 
time and still think. You see I had come to 
the place where I could understand a German 
soldier's national and racial point of view, 
though I doubt his ability ever of understanding 
mine. To him, now, old John Burns of Gettys- 
burg, going out in his high, high hat and his 
long, long coat to fight with the boys would 
never, could never be the heroic figure which 
he is in the American imagination; he would 
have been a meddlesome malefactor deserving 
of immediate death. For 1778 write it 1914, 
and Molly Pitcher serving at the guns would 
have been in no better case before a German 
court-martial. I doubt whether a Prussian 
Stonewall Jackson would give orders to kill a 
French Barbara Frietchie, but assuredly he 
would lock that venturesome old person up in 
a fortress where she could not hoist her coun- 
[269] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



try's flag nor invite anybody to shoot her 
gray head. For you must know that the Ger- 
man who ordinarily brims over with that emo- 
tion which, lacking a better name for it, we 
call sentiment, drains all the sentiment out of 
his soul when he takes his gun in his hand and 
goes to war. 

Among the frowzy turnip tops two big dull 
gray automobiles were stranded, like large 
hulks in a small green sea. Alongside them 
a devil's darning-needle of a wireless mast 
stuck up, one hundred and odd feet, toward 
the sky. It was stayed with many steel guy 
ropes, like the center pole of a circus top. 
It was of the collapsible model and might there- 
fore be telescoped into itself and taken down 
in twenty minutes, so we were informed pride- 
fully by the captain in charge; and from its 
needle-pointed tip the messages caught out 
of the ether came down by wire conductors 
to the interior of one of the stalled auto- 
mobiles and there were noted down and, when- 
ever possible, translated by two soldier-oper- 
ators, who perched on wooden stools among 
batteries and things, for which I know not 
the technical names. The spitty snarl of the 
apparatus filled the air for rods roundabout. 
It made you think of a million gritty slate 
pencils squeaking over a million slates all to- 
gether. We were permitted to take up the 
receivers and listen to a faint scratching sound 
which must have come from a long way off. 
[2701 



WAR DE LUXE 



Indeed the officer told us that it was a message 
from the enemy that we heard. 

"Our men just picked it up," he explained; 
"we think it must come from a French wireless 
station across the river. Naturally we cannot 
understand it, any more than they can under- 
stand our messages — they're all in code, you 
know. Every day or two we change our code, 
and I presume they do too." 

Two of our party had unshipped their cam- 
eras by now, for the pass which we carried 
entitled us, among other important things, to 
commandeer that precious fluid, gasoline, when- 
ever needed, and to take photographs; but 
we were asked to make no shapshots here. 
We gathered that there were certain reasons 
not unconnected with secret military usage 
why we might not take away with us plates 
bearing pictures of the field wireless. In the 
main, though, remarkably few restrictions were 
laid upon us that day. Once or twice, very 
casually, somebody asked us to refrain from 
writing about this thing or that thing which 
we had seen; but that was all. 

In a corner of the turnip field close up to 
the road were mounds of fresh-turned clay, 
and so many of them were there and so closely 
were they spaced and for so considerable a dis- 
tance did they stretch along, they made two 
long yellow ribs above the herbage. At close 
intervals small wooden crosses were stuck up 
in the rounded combs of earth so that the 
[271] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



crosses formed a sort of irregular fence. A 
squad of soldiers were digging more holes in 
the tough earth. Their shovel blades flashed 
in the sunlight and the clods flew up in showers. 

"We have many buried over there," said 
an artillery captain, seeing that I watched the 
grave diggers, "a general among them and 
other officers. It is there we bury those who 
die in the Institute hospital. Every day more 
die, and so each morning trenches are made 
ready for those who will die during that day. 
A good friend of mine is over there; he was 
buried day before yesterday. I sat up late 
last night writing to his wife — or perhaps I 
should say his widow. They had been married 
only a few weeks when the call came. It will 
be very hard on her." 

He did not name the general who lay over 
yonder, nor did we ask him the name. To 
ask would not have been etiquette, and for 
him to answer would have been worse. Rarely 
in our wanderings did we find a German soldier 
of whatsoever rank who referred to his superior 
officer by name. He merely said "My cap- 
tain" or "Our colonel." And this was of a 
piece with the plan — not entirely confined to 
the Germans — of making a secret of losses of 
commanders and movements of commands. 

We went thence then, the distance being 

perhaps three miles by road and not above 

eight minutes by automobile at the rate we 

traveled to an aviation camp at the back 

[272] 



WAR DE LUXE 



side of the town. Here was very much to see, 
including many aeroplanes of sorts domiciled 
under canvas hangars and a cheerful, chatty, 
hospitable group of the most famous aviators 
in the German army — lean, keen young men 
all of them — and a sample specimen of the 
radish-shaped bomb which these gentlemen 
carry aloft with the intent of dropping it 
upon their enemies when occasion shall offer. 
Each of us in turn solemnly hefted the bomb 
to feel its weight. I should guess it weighed 
thirty pounds — say, ten pounds for the case 
and twenty pounds for its load of fearsome 
ingredients. Finally, yet foremost, we were 
invited to inspect that thing which is the pride 
and the brag of this particular arm of the 
German Army — a balloon-cannon, so called. 

The balloon-gun of this size is — or was at 
the date when I saw it — an exclusively German 
institution. I believe the Allies have balloon- 
guns too, but theirs are smaller, according to 
what the Germans say. This one was mounted 
on a squatty half-turret at the tail end of an 
armored-steel truck. It had a mechanism as 
daintily adjusted as a lady's watch and much 
more accurate, and when being towed by its 
attendant automobile, which has harnessed 
within it the power of a hundred and odd draft 
horses, it has been known to cover sixty 
English miles in an hour, for all that its weight 
is that of very many loaded vans. 

The person in authority here was a youthful 
[ 273 ] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



and blithe lieutenant — an Iron Cross man — 
with pale, shallow blue eyes and a head of bright 
blond hair. He spun one small wheel to show 
how his pet's steel nose might be elevated 
almost straight upward; then turned another 
to show how the gun might be swung, as on a 
pivot, this way and that to command the range 
of the entire horizon, and he concluded the 
performance, with the aid of several husky 
lads in begrimed gray, by going through the 
pantomime of loading with a long yellow five- 
inch shell from the magazine behind him, and 
pretending to fire, meanwhile explaining that he 
could send one shot aloft every six seconds 
and with each shot reach a maximum altitude 
of between seven and eight thousand feet. 
Altogether it was a very pretty sight to see 
and most edifying. Likewise it took on an 
added interest when we learned that the blue- 
eyed youth and his brother of a twin balloon- 
cannon at the front of Laon had during the 
preceding three weeks brought down four of 
the enemy's airmen, and were exceedingly 
hopeful of fattening their joint average before 
the present week had ended. 

After that we took photographs ad lib., and 
McCutcheon had a trip with Ingold, a great 
aviator, in a biplane, which the Germans call 
a double-decker, as distinguished from the Taube 
or monoplane, with its birdlike wings and 
curved tail rudder-piece. Just as they came 
down, after a circular spin over the lines, a 
[274] 



WAR DE LUXE 



strange machine, presumably hostile, appeared 
far up and far away, but circled off to the south 
out of target reach before the balloon gunman 
could get the range of her and the aim. On 
the heels of this a biplane from another aviation 
field somewhere down the left wing dropped 
in quite informally bearing two grease-stained 
men to pass the time of day and borrow some 
gasoline. The occasion appeared to demand 
a drink. We all repaired, therefore, to one of 
the great canvas houses where the air birds 
nest nighttimes and where the airmen sleep. 
There we had noggins of white wine all round, 
and a pointer dog, which was chained to an 
officer's trunk, begged me in plain pointer 
language to cast off his leash so he might go 
and stalk the covey of pheasants that were 
taking a dust-bath in the open road not fifty 
yards away. 

The temptation was strong, but our guides 
said if we meant to get to the battlefront 
before lunch it was time, and past time, we 
got started. Being thus warned we did get 
started. 

Of a battle there is this to be said— that 
the closer you get to it the less do you see 
of it. Always in my experiences in Belgium 
and my more recent experiences in France I 
found this to be true. Take, for example, the 
present instance. I knew that we were ap- 
proximately in the middle sworl of the twist- 
ing scroll formed by the German center, and 
[275] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



that we were at this moment entering the very 
tip of the enormous inverted V made by the 
frontmost German defenses. I knew that 
stretching away to the southeast of us and to 
the northwest was a line some two hundred 
miles long, measuring it from tip to tip, where 
sundry millions of men in English khaki and 
French fustian and German shoddy-wools were 
fighting the biggest fight and the most pro- 
longed fight and the most stubborn fight that 
historians probably will write down as having 
been fought in this war or any lesser war. I 
knew this fight had been going on for weeks 
now back and forth upon the River Aisne 
and would certainly go on for weeks and per- 
haps months more to come. I knew these 
things because I had been told them; but I 
shouldn't have known if I hadn't been told. 
I shouldn't even have guessed it. 

I recall that we traveled at a cup-racing clip 
along a road that first wound like a coiling 
snake and then straightened like a striking 
snake, and that always we traveled through 
dust so thick it made a fog. In this chalky 
land of northern France the brittle soil dries 
out after a rain very quickly, and turns into 
a white powder where there are wheels to 
churn it up and grit it fine. Here surely there 
was an abundance of wheels. We passed many 
marching men and many lumbering supply 
trains which were going our way, and we met 
many motor ambulances and many ammuni- 
[276] 



WAR DE LUXE 



tion trucks which were coming back. Always 
the ambulances were full and the ammunition 
wagons were empty. I judge an expert in these 
things might by the fullness of the one and 
the emptiness of the other gauge the emphasis 
with which the fight ahead went on. The 
drivers of the trucks nearly all wore captured 
French caps and French uniform coats, which 
adornment the marching men invariably re- 
garded as a quaint jest to be laughed at and 
cheered for. 

We stopped at our appointed place, which 
was on the top of a ridge where a general of a 
corps had his headquarters. From here one 
had a view — a fair view and, roughly, a fan- 
shaped view — of certain highly important artil- 
lery operations. Likewise, the eminence, gentle 
and gradual as it was, commanded a mile-long 
stretch of the road, which formed the main 
line of communication between the front and 
the base; and these two facts in part explained 
why the general had made this his abiding place. 
Even my layman's mind could sense the rea- 
sons for establishing headquarters at such a 
spot. 

As for the general, he and his staff, at the 
moment of our arrival in their midst, were sta- 
tioned at the edge of a scanty woodland where 
telescopes stood and a table with maps and 
charts on it. Quite with the manner of men 
who had nothing to do except to enjoy the 
sunshine and breathe the fresh air, they strolled 
[277] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



back and forth in pairs and trios. I think it 
must have been through force of habit that, 
when they halted to turn about and retrace the 
route, they stopped always for a moment or 
two and faced southward. It was from the 
southward that there came rolling up to us 
the sounds of a bellowing chorus of gunfire — a 
Wagnerian chorus, truly. That perhaps was 
as it should be. Wagner's countrymen were 
helping to make it. Now the separate reports 
strung out until you could count perhaps three 
between reports; now they came so close to- 
gether that the music they made was a con- 
stant roaring which would endure for a minute 
on a stretch, or half a minute anyhow. But 
for all the noticeable heed which any uniformed 
men in my vicinity paid to this it might as 
well have been blasting in a distant stone 
quarry. This attitude which they maintained, 
coupled with the fact that seemingly all the 
firing did no damage whatsoever, only served 
to strengthen the illusion that after all it was 
not the actual business of warfare which 
spread itself beneath our eyes. 

Apparently most of the shells from the 
Allies' side — which of course was the far side 
from us — rose out of a dip in the contour of 
the land. Rising so, they mainly fell among 
or near the shattered remnants of two hamlets 
upon the nearer front of a little hill perhaps 
three miles from our location. A favorite 
object of their attack appeared to be a wrecked 
[2781 



WAR DE LUXE 



beet-sugar factory of which one side was 
blown away. 

There would appear just above the horizon 
line a ball of smoke as black as your hat and 
the size of your hat, which meant a grenade 
of high explosives. Then right behind it would 
blossom a dainty, plumy little blob of innocent 
white, fit to make a pompon for the hat, and 
that, they told us, would be shrapnel. The 
German reply to the enemy's guns issued 
from the timbered verges of slopes at our right 
hand and our left; and these German shells, so 
far as we might judge, passed entirely over 
and beyond the smashed hamlets and the ruined 
sugar-beet factory and, curving downward, ex- 
ploded out of our sight. 

"The French persist in a belief that we 
have men in those villages," said one of the 
general's aides to me. "They are wasting their 
powder. There are many men there and some 
among them are Germans, but they are all 
dead men." 

He offered to show me some live men, and 
took me to one of the telescopes and aimed 
the barrel of it in the proper direction while 
I focused for distance. Suddenly out of the 
blur of the lens there sprang up in front of me, 
seemingly quite close, a zigzagging toy trench 
cut in the face of a little hillock. This trench 
was full of gray figures of the size of very small 
dolls. They were moving aimlessly back and 
forth, it seemed to me, doing nothing at all. 
[2793 



PATHS OF GLORY 



Then I saw another trench that ran slantwise 
up the hillock and it contained more of the 
pygmies. A number of these pygmies came 
out of their trench — I could see them quite 
plainly, clambering up the steep wall of it — 
and they moved, very slowly it would seem, 
toward the crosswise trench on ahead a bit. 
To reach it they had to cross a sloping green 
patch of cleared land. So far as I might tell 
no explosive or shrapnel shower fell into them 
or near them, but when they had gone perhaps 
a third of the distance across the green patch 
there was a quick scatteration of their inch- 
high figures. Quite distinctly I counted three 
manikins who instantly fell down flat and two 
others who went ahead a little way deliberately, 
and then lay down. The rest darted back to 
the cover which they had just quit and jumped 
in briskly. The five figures remained where 
they had dropped and became quiet. Anyway, 
I could detect no motion in them. They were 
just little gray strips. Into my mind on the 
moment came incongruously a memory of what 
I had seen a thousand times in the composing 
room of a country newspaper where the type 
was set by hand. I thought of five pica plugs 
lying on the printshop floor. 

It was hard for me to make myself believe 
that I had seen human beings killed and 
wounded. I can hardly believe it yet — that 
those insignificant toy-figures were really and 
truly men. I watched through the glass after 
[2801 



WAR DE LUXE 



that for possibly twenty minutes, until the 
summons came for lunch, but no more of the 
German dolls ventured out of their make- 
believe defenses to be blown flat by an in- 
visible blast. 

It was a picnic lunch served on board trestles 
under a tree behind the cover of a straw-roofed 
shelter tent, and we ate it in quite a peaceful 
and cozy picnic fashion. Twice during the 
meal an orderly came with a message which 
he had taken off a field telephone in a little 
pigsty of logs and straw fifty feet away from 
us; but the general each time merely canted 
his head to hear what the whispered word 
might be and went on eating. There was no 
clattering in of couriers, no hurried dispatching 
of orders this way and that. Only, just before 
we finished with the meal, he got up and 
walked away a few paces, and there two of 
his aides joined him and the three of them 
confabbed together earnestly for a couple of 
minutes or so. While so engaged they had 
the air about them of surgeons preparing to 
undertake an operation and first consulting 
over the preliminary details. Or perhaps it 
would be truer to say they looked like civil 
engineers discussing the working-out of an 
undertaking regarding which there was interest 
but no uneasiness. Assuredly they behaved 
not in the least as a general and aides would 
behave in a story book or on the stage, and 
when they were through they came back for 
[281] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



their coffee and their cigars to the table where 
the rest of us sat. 

"We are going now to a battery of the 
twenty-one-centimeter guns and from there 
to the ten-centimeters," called out Lieutenant 
Geibel as we climbed aboard our cars; "and 
when we pass that first group of houses yonder 
we shall be under fire. So if you have wills to 
make, you American gentlemen, you should 
be making them now before we start." A gay 
young officer was Lieutenant Geibel, and he 
just naturally would have his little joke 
whether or no. 

Immediately then and twice again that day 
we were technically presumed to be under 
fire — I use the word technically advisedly — 
and again the next day and once again two days 
thereafter before Antwerp, but I was never 
able to convince myself that it was so. Cer- 
tainly there was no sense of actual danger as 
we sped through the empty single street of a 
despoiled and tenantless village. All about us 
were the marks of what the shellfire had done, 
some fresh and still smoking, some old and 
dry-charred, but no shells dropped near us 
as we circled in a long swing up to within 
half a mile of the first line of German trenches 
and perhaps a mile to the left of them. 

Thereby we arrived safely and very speedily 
and without mishap at a battery of twenty- 
one-centimeter guns, standing in a gnawed 
sheep pasture behind an abandoned farmhouse 
[282] 



WAR DE LUXE 



— or what was left of a farmhouse, which was 
to say very little of it indeed. The guns stood 
in a row, and each one of them — there were 
five in all — stared with its single round eye 
at the blue sky where the sky showed above 
a thick screen of tall slim poplars growing on 
the far side of the farmyard. We barely had 
time to note that the men who served the 
guns were denned in holes in the earth like 
wolves, with earthen roofs above them and 
straw beds to lie on, and that they had screened 
each gun in green saplings cut from the woods 
and stuck upright in the ground, to hide its 
position from the sight of prying aeroplane 
scouts, and that the wheels of the guns were 
tired with huge, broad steel plates called 
caterpillars, to keep them from bogging down 
in miry places — I say we barely had time to 
note these details mentally when things began 
to happen. There was a large and much be- 
mired soldier who spraddled face downward 
upon his belly in one of the straw-lined dugouts 
with his ear hitched to a telephone. Without 
lifting his head or turning it he sang out. At 
that all the other men sprang up very promptly. 
Before, they had been sprawled about in 
sunny places, smoking and sleeping, and 
writing on postcards. Postcards, butter and 
beer — these are the German private's luxuries, 
but most of all postcards. The men bestirred 
themselves. 

"You are in luck, gentlemen," said the 
[283] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



lieutenant. "This battery has been idle all 
day, but now it is to begin firing. The order 
to fire just came. The balloon operator, who 
is in communication with the observation pits 
beyond the foremost infantry trenches, will 
give the range and the distance. Listen, 
please." He held up his hand for silence, 
intent on hearing what the man at the telephone 
was repeating back over the line. "Ah, that's 
it — 5400 meters straight over the tree tops." 

He waved us together into a more compact 
group. "That's the idea. Stand here, please, 
behind Number One gun, and watch straight 
ahead of you for the shot — you must watch 
very closely or you will miss it — and remember 
to keep your mouth open to save your ear- 
drums from being injured by the concussion." 

So far as I personally was concerned this 
last bit of advice was unnecessary — my mouth 
was open already. Four men trotted to a 
magazine that was in an earthen kennel and 
came back bearing a wheelless sheet-metal 
barrow on which rested a three-foot-long brass 
shell, very trim and slim and handsome and 
shiny like gold. It was an expensive-looking 
shell and quite ornate. At the tail of Number 
One the bearers heaved the barrow up shoulder- 
high, at the same time tilting it forward. 
Then a round vent opened magically and the 
cyclops sucked the morsel forward into its 
gullet, thus reversing the natural swallowing 
process, and smacked its steel lip behind it 
[ 284 1 



WAR DE LUXE 



with a loud and greasy snuck! A glutton of a 
gun — you could tell that from the sound it 
made. 

A lieutenant snapped out something, a ser- 
geant snapped it back to him, the gun crew 
jumped aside, balancing themselves on tiptoe 
with their mouths all agape, and the gun-firer 
either pulled a lever out or else pushed one 
home, I couldn't tell which. Then everything 
— sky and woods and field and all — fused and 
ran together in a great spatter of red flame 
and white smoke, and the earth beneath our 
feet shivered and shook as the twenty-one- 
centimeter spat out its twenty-one-centimeter 
mouthful. A vast obscenity of sound beat 
upon us, making us reel backward, and for 
just the one-thousandth part of a second I 
saw a round white spot, like a new baseball, 
against a cloud background. The poplars, 
which had bent forward as if before a quick 
wind-squall, stood up, trembling in their tops, 
and we dared to breathe again. Then each 
in its turn the other four guns spoke, profaning 
the welkin, and we rocked on our heels like 
drunken men, and I remember there was a queer 
taste, as of something burned, in my mouth. 
All of which was very fine, no doubt, and very 
inspiring, too, if one cared deeply for that sort 
of thing; but to myself, when the hemisphere 
had ceased from its quiverings, I said: 

"It isn't true — this isn't war; it's just a 
costly, useless game of playing at war. Behold, 
[2851 



PATHS OF GLORY 



now, these guns did not fire at anybody visible 
or anything tangible. They merely elevated 
their muzzles into the sky and fired into the 
sky to make a great tumult and spoil the good 
air with a bad-tasting smoke. No enemy is 
in sight and no enemy will answer back; there- 
fore no enemy exists. It is all a useless and a 
fussy business, signifying nothing." 

Nor did any enemy answer back. The guns 
having been fired with due pomp and circum- 
stance, the gunners went back to those pipe- 
smoking and postcard-writing pursuits of theirs 
and everything was as before — peaceful and en- 
tirely serene. Only the telephone man re- 
mained in his bed in the straw with his ear at 
his telephone. He was still couched there, 
spraddling ridiculously on his stomach, with 
his legs outstretched in a sawbuck pattern, as 
we came away. 

"It isn't always quite so quiet hereabouts," 
said the lieutenant. "The commander of this 
battery tells me that yesterday the French 
dropped some shrapnel among his guns and 
killed a man or two. Perhaps things will be 
brisker at the ten-centimeter-giin battery." 
He spoke as one who regretted that the show 
which he offered was not more exciting. 

The twenty-one-centimeters, as I have told 
you, were in the edge of the woods, with leafy 
ambushes about them, but the little ten- 
centimeter guns ranged themselves quite boldly 
in a meadow of rank long grass just under the 
[286] 



WAR DE LUXE 



weather-rim of a small hill. They were buried 
to their haunches — if a field gun may be said 
to have haunches — in depressions gouged out 
by their own frequent recoils; otherwise they 
were without concealment of any sort. To 
reach them we rode a mile or two and then 
walked a quarter of a mile through a series of 
chalky bare gullies, and our escorts made us stoop 
low and hurry fast wherever the path wound up 
to the crest of the bank, lest our figures, being 
outlined against the sky, should betray our 
whereabouts and, what was more important, the 
whereabouts of the battery to the sharp- 
shooters in the French rifle pits forward of the 
French infantry trenches and not exceeding 
a mile from us. We stopped first at an ob- 
servation station cunningly hidden in a uaw 
thicket on the brow of a steep and heavily 
wooded defile overlooking the right side of the 
river valley — the river, however, being entirely 
out of sight. Standing here we heard the 
guns speak apparently from almost beneath 
our feet, and three or four seconds thereafter 
we saw five little puff balls of white smoke un- 
curling above a line of trees across the valley. 
Somebody said this was our battery shelling 
the French and English in those woods yonder, 
but you could hardly be expected to believe 
that, since no reply came back and no French 
or English whatsoever showed themselves. 
Altogether it seemed a most impotent and im- 
personal proceeding; and when the novelty of 
[287] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



waiting for the blast of sound and then watch- 
ing for the smoke plumes to appear had worn 
off, as it very soon did, we visited the guns 
themselves. They were not under our feet at 
all. They were some two hundred yards away, 
across a field where the telephone wires 
stretched over the old plow furrows and 
through the rank meadow grass, like springes 
to catch woodcock. 

Here again the trick of taking a message 
off the telephone and shouting it forth from 
the mouth of a fox burrow was repeated. 
Whenever this procedure came to pass a ser- 
geant who had strained his vocal cords from 
much giving of orders would swell out his 
chest and throw back his head and shriek 
hoarsely with what was left of his voice, which 
wasn't much. This meant a fury of noise 
resulting instantly and much white smoke to 
follow. For a while the guns were fired singly 
and then they were fired in salvos; and you 
might mark how the grass for fifty yards in 
front of the muzzles would lie on the earth 
quite flat and then stand erect, and how the 
guns, like shying bronchos, would leap back- 
ward upon their carriages and then slide for- 
ward again as the air in the air cushions took 
up the kick. Also we took note that the crews 
of the ten-centimeters had built for them- 
selves dugouts to sleep in and to live in, and 
had covered the sod roofs over with straw 
and broken tree limbs. We judged they would 

] 



WAR DE LUXE 



be very glad indeed to crawl into those same 
shelters when night came, for they had been 
serving the guns all day and plainly were about 
as weary as men could be. To burn powder 
hour after hour and day after day and week 
after week at a foe who never sees you and 
whom you never see; to go at this dreary, 
heavy trade of war with the sober, uninspired 
earnestness of convicts building a prison wall 
about themselves — the ghastly unreality of the 
proposition left me mentally numbed. 

Howsoever, we arrived not long after that 
at a field hospital — namely, Field Hospital 
Number 36, and here was realism enough to 
satisfy the lexicographer who first coined the 
word. This field hospital was established in 
eight abandoned houses of the abandoned 
small French village of Colligis, and all eight 
houses were crowded with wounded men lying 
as closely as they could lie upon mattresses placed 
side by side on the floors, with just room to 
step between the mattresses. Be it remembered 
also that these were all men too seriously 
wounded to be moved even to a point as close 
as Laon; those more lightly injured than these 
were already carried back to the main hospitals. 

We went into one room containing only men 
suffering from chest wounds, who coughed and 
wheezed and constantly fought off the swarm- 
ing flies that assailed them, and into another 
room given over entirely to brutally abbreviated 
human fragments — fractional parts of men 
[289] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



who had lost their arms or legs. On the far 
mattress against the wall lay a little pale 
German with his legs gone below the knees, 
who smiled upward at the ceiling and was quite 
chipper. 

"A wonderful man, that little chap," said 
one of the surgeons to me. "When they first 
brought him here two weeks ago I said to him: 
'It's hard on you that you should lose both 
your feet,' and he looked up at me and grinned 
and said: 'Herr Doctor, it might have been 
worse. It might have been my hands — and 
me a tailor by trade!' " 

This surgeon told us he had an American 
wife, and he asked me to bear a message for 
him to his wife's people in the States. So 
if these lines should come to the notice of 
Mrs. Rosamond Harris, who lives at Hines- 
burg, Vermont, she may know that her son- 
in-law, Doctor Schilling, was at last accounts 
very busy and very well, although coated with 
white dust — face, head and eyebrows — so that 
he reminded me of a clown in a pantomime, 
and dyed as to his hands with iodine to an 
extent that made his fingers look like pieces 
of well-cured meerschaum. 

They were bringing in more men, newly 
wounded that day, as we came out of Doctor 
Schilling's improvised operating room in the 
little village schoolhouse, and one of the litter 
bearers was a smart-faced little London Cock- 
ney, a captured English ambulance-hand, who 
[290] 



WAR DE LUXE 



wore a German soldier's cap to save him from 
possible annoyance as he went about his work. 
Not very many wounded had arrived since the 
morning — it was a dull day for them, the 
surgeons said — but I took note that, when the 
Red Cross men put down a canvas stretcher 
upon the courtyard flags and shortly there- 
after took it up again, it left a broad red smear 
where it rested against the flat stones. Also 
this stretcher and all the other stretchers had 
been so sagged by the weight of bodies that 
they threatened to rip from the frames, and so 
stained by that which had stained them that 
the canvas was as stiff as though it had been 
varnished and revarnished with many coats 
of brown shellac. But it wasn't shellac. There 
is just one fluid which leaves that brown, hard 
coating when it dries upon woven cloth. 

As I recall now we had come through the 
gate of the schoolhouse to where the auto- 
mobiles stood when a puff of wind, blowing 
to us from the left, which meant from across 
the battlefront, brought to our noses a certain 
smell which we already knew full well. 

"You get it, I see," said the German officer 
who stood alongside me. "It comes from 
three miles off, but you can get it five miles 
distant when the wind is strong. That" — 
and he waved his left arm toward it as though 
the stench had been a visible thing — "that 
explains why tobacco is so scarce with us 
among the staff back yonder in Laon. All the 
[291 ] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



tobacco which can be spared is sent to the men 
in the front trenches. As long as they smoke 
and keep on smoking they can stand — that! 

"You see," he went on painstakingly, "the 
situation out there at Cerny is like this: The 
French and English, but mainly the English, 
held the ground first. We drove them back 
and they lost very heavily. In places their 
trenches were actually full of dead and dying 
men when we took those trenches. 

"You could have buried them merely by 
filling up the trenches with earth. And that 
old beet-sugar factory which you saw this 
noon when we were at field headquarters — it 
was crowded with badly wounded Englishmen. 

"At once they rallied and forced us back, 
and now it was our turn to lose heavily. That 
was nearly three weeks ago, and since then 
the ground over which we fought has been 
debatable ground, lying between our lines and 
the enemy's lines — a stretch four miles long 
and half a mile wide that is literally carpeted 
with bodies of dead men. They weren't all 
dead at first. For two days and nights our 
men in the earthworks heard the cries of 
those who still lived, and the sound of them 
almost drove them mad. There was no reach- 
ing the wounded, though, either from our 
lines or from the Allies' lines. Those who tried 
to reach them were themselves killed. Now 
there are only dead out there — thousands of 
dead, I think. And they have been there 
[2921 



WAR DE LUXE 



twenty days. Once in a while a shell strikes 
that old sugar mill or falls into one of those 
trenches. Then — well, then, it is worse for 
those who serve in the front lines." 

"But in the name of God, man," I said, 
"why don't they call a truce — both sides — 
and put that horror underground?" 

He shrugged his shoulders. 

"War is different now," he said. "Truces 
are out of fashion." 

I stood there and I smelled that smell. And 
I thought of all those flies, and those blood- 
stiffened stretchers, and those little inch-long 
figures which I myself, looking through that 
telescope, had seen lying on the green hill, and 
those automobiles loaded with mangled men, 
and War de Luxe betrayed itself to me. Be- 
neath its bogus glamour I saw war for what 
it is — the next morning of drunken glory. 



[293] 



CHAPTER XII 
THE RUT OF BIG GUNS IN FRANCE 



LET me say at the outset of this chapter 
that I do not setup as one professing 
4 to have any knowledge whatsoever of 
so-called military science. The more I 
have seen of the carrying-on of the actual 
business of war, the less able do I seem to 
be to understand the meanings of the business. 
For me strategy remains a closed book. Even 
the simplest primary lessons of it, the A B C's 
of it, continue to impress me as being stupid, 
but none the less unplumbable mysteries. 

The physical aspects of campaigning I can 
in a way grasp. > At least I flatter myself that 
I can. A man would have to be deaf and 
dumb and blind not to grasp them, did they 
reveal themselves before him as they have 
revealed themselves before me. Indeed, if he 
preserved only the faculty of scent unimpaired 
he might still be able to comprehend the thing, 
since, as I have said before, war in its com- 
[294] 



BIG GUNS IN FRANCE 



moner phases is not so much a sight as a great 
bad smell. As for the rudiments of the sys- 
tem which dictates the movements of troops 
in large masses or in small, which sacrifices 
thousands of men to take a town or hold a river 
when that town and that river, physically 
considered, appear to be of no consequence 
whatsoever, those elements I have not been able 
to sense, even though I studied the matter 
most diligently. So after sundry months of 
first-hand observation in one of the theaters of 
hostilities, I tell myself that the trade of fighting 
is a trade to be learned by slow and laborious 
degrees, and even then may be learned with 
thoroughness only by one who has a natural 
aptitude for it. Either that, or else I am most 
extraordinarily thick-headed, for I own that 
I am still as complete a greenhorn now as I 
was at the beginning. 

Having made the confession which is said 
to be good for the soul, and which in any 
event has the merit of blunting in advance the 
critical judgments of the expert, since he must 
pity my ignorance and my innocence even 
though he quarrel with my conclusions, I now 
assume the role of prophet long enough to 
venture to say that the day of the modern 
walled fort is over and done with. I do not 
presume to speak regarding coast defenses 
maintained for the purposes of repelling at- 
tacks or invasions from the sea. I am speaking 
with regard to land defenses which are assail- 
[295] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



able by land forces. I believe in the future 
great wars — if indeed there are to be any more 
great wars following after this one — that the 
nations involved, instead of buttoning their 
frontiers down with great fortresses and ring- 
ing their principal cities about with circles of 
protecting works, will put their trust more 
and more in transportable cannon of a caliber 
and a projecting force greater than any yet 
built or planned. I make this assertion after 
viewing the visible results of the operations of 
the German 42-centimeter guns in Belgium and 
France, notably at Liege in the former country 
and at Maubeuge in the latter. 

Except for purposes of frightening non- 
combatants the Zeppelins apparently have 
proved of most dubious value; nor, barring 
its value as a scout — a field in which it is of 
marvelous efficiency — does the aeroplane appear 
to have been of much consequence in inflicting 
loss upon the enemy. Of the comparatively 
new devices for waging war, the submarine and 
the great gun alone seem to have justified in 
any great degree the hopes of their sponsors. 

Since I came back out of the war zone I 
have met persons who questioned the existence 
of a 42-centimeter gun, they holding it to be a 
nightmare created out of the German imagina- 
tion with intent to break the confidence of the 
enemies of Germany. I did not see a 42-centi- 
meter gun with my own eyes, and personally I 
doubt whether the Germans had as many of 
[296] 



BIG GUNS IN FRANCE 



them as they claimed to have; but I talked 
with one entirely reliable witness, an American 
consular officer, who saw a 42-centimeter gun 
as it was being transported to the front in the 
opening week of the war, and with another 
American, a diplomat of high rank, who inter- 
viewed a man who saw one of these guns, 
and who in detailing the conversation to me 
said the spectator had been literally stunned 
by the size and length and the whole terrific 
contour of the monster. Finally, I know from 
personal experience that these guns have been 
employed, and employed with a result that 
goes past adequate description; but if I hadn't 
seen the effect of their fire I wouldn't have 
believed it were true. I wouldn't have be- 
lieved anything evolved out of the brains of 
men and put together by the fingers of men 
could operate with such devilish accuracy to 
compass such utter destruction. I would have 
said it was some planetic force, some convulsion 
of natural forces, and not an agency of human 
devisement, that turned Fort Loncin inside 
out, and transformed it within a space of hours 
from a supposedly impregnable stronghold 
into a hodgepodge of complete and hideous 
ruination. And what befell Fort Loncin on 
the hills behind Liege befell Fort Des Sarts 
outside of Maubeuge, as I have reason to know. 
When the first of the 42-centimeters emerged 
from Essen it took a team of thirty horses to 
haul it; and with it out of that nest of the 
[297] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



Prussian war eagle came also a force of mechan- 
ics and engineers to set it up and aim it and fire it. 
Here, too, is an interesting fact that I have not 
seen printed anywhere, though I heard it often 
enough in Germany: by reason of its bulk the 
42-centimeter must be mounted upon a con- 
crete base before it can be used. Heretofore 
the concrete which was available for this pur- 
pose required at least a fortnight of exposure 
before it was sufficiently firm and hardened; but 
when Fraulein Bertha Krupp's engineers es- 
corted the Fraulein's newest and most im- 
pressive steel masterpiece to the war, they 
brought along with them the ingredients for 
a new kind of concrete; and those who claim 
to have been present on the occasion declare 
that within forty-eight hours after they had 
mixed and molded it, it was ready to bear the 
weight of the guns and withstand the shock 
of their recoil. 

This having been done, I conceive of the 
operators as hoisting their guns into position, 
and posting up a set of rules — even in time of 
war it is impossible to imagine the Germans 
doing anything of importance without a set of 
rules to go by — and working out the distance 
by mathematics, and then turning loose their 
potential cataclysms upon the stubborn forts 
which opposed their further progress. From 
the viewpoint of the Germans the consequences 
to the foe must amply have justified the trouble 
and the cost. For where a 42-centimeter shell 
[2981 



BIG GUNS IN FRANCE 



falls it does more than merely alter landscape; 
almost you might say it alters geography. 

In the open field, where he must aim his gun 
with his own eye and discharge it with his own 
finger, I take it the Kaiser's private soldier is 
no great shakes as a marksman. The Germans 
themselves begrudgingly admitted the French 
excelled them in the use of light artillery. 
There was wonderment as well as reluctance 
in this concession. To them it seemed well- 
nigh incredible that any nation should be their 
superiors in any department pertaining to the 
practice of war. They could not bring them- 
selves fully to understand it. It remained as 
much a puzzle to them as the unaccountable 
obstinacy of the English in refusing to be 
budged out of their position by displays of 
cold steel, or to be shaken by the volleying, 
bull-like roar of the German charging cry, 
which at first the Germans counted upon as 
being almost as efficacious as the bayonet for 
instilling a wholesome fear of the German war 
god into the souls of their foes. 

While giving the Frenchmen credit for 
knowing how to handle and serve small field- 
pieces, the Germans nevertheless insisted that 
their infantry fire or their' skirmish fire was 
as deadly as that of the Allies, or even deadlier. 
This I was not prepared to believe. I do not 
think the German is a good rifle shot by in- 
stinct, as the American often is, and in a lesser 
degree, perhaps, the Englishman is, too. But 
[299] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



where lie can work the range out on paper, 
where he has to do with mechanics instead of 
a shifting mark, where he can apply to the de- 
tails of gun firing the exact principles of arith- 
metic, I am pretty sure the German is as 
good a gunner as may be found on the Con- 
tinent of Europe to-day. This may not apply 
to him at sea, for he has neither the sailor 
traditions nor the inherited naval craftsmanship 
of the English; but judging by what I have 
seen I am quite certain that with the solid 
earth beneath him and a set of figures before 
him and an enemy out of sight of him to be 
damaged he is in a class all by himself. 

A German staff officer, who professed to 
have been present, told me that at Manonvilla 
— so he spelled the name — a 42-centimeter 
gun was fired one hundred and forty-seven 
times from a distance of 14,000 meters at a 
fort measuring 600 meters in length by 400 
meters in breadth — a very small target, in- 
deed, considering the range — and that inves- 
tigation after the capture of the fort showed 
not a single one of the one hundred and forty- 
seven shots had been an outright miss. Some 
few, he said, hit the walls or at the bases of 
the walls, but all the others, he claimed, had 
bull's-eyed into the fort itself. 

Subsequently, on subjecting this tale to the 

acid test of second thought I was compelled 

to doubt what the staff officer had said. To 

begin with, I didn't understand how a 42- 

[300] 



BIG GUNS IN FRANCE 



centimeter gun could be fired one hundred 
and forty-seven times without its wearing out, 
for I have often heard that the larger the 
bore of your gun and the heavier the charge 
of explosives which it carries, the shorter is 
its period of efficiency. In the second place, 
it didn't seem possible after being hit one 
hundred and forty-seven times with 42-centi- 
meter bombs that enough of any fort of what- 
soever size would be left to permit of a tallying- 
up of separate shots. Ten shots properly 
placed should have razed it; twenty more 
should have blown its leveled remainder to 
powder and scattered the powder. 

Be the facts what they may with regard to 
this case of the fort of Manonvilla — if that be 
its proper name — I am prepared to speak with 
the assurance of an eyewitness concerning the 
effect of the German fire upon the defenses 
of Maubeuge. What I saw at Liege I have 
described in a previous chapter of this volume. 
What I saw at Maubeuge was even more 
convincing testimony, had I needed it, that the 
Germans had a 42-centimeter gun, and that, 
given certain favored conditions, they knew 
how to handle it effectively. 

We spent the better part of a day in two of 
the forts which were fondly presumed to guard 
Maubeuge toward the north — Fort Des Sarts 
and Fort Boussois; but Fort Des Sarts was the 
one where the 42-centimeter gun gave the first 
exhibition of its powers upon French soil in 
[3011 



PATHS OF GLORY 



this war, so we went there first. To reach it 
we ran a matter of seven kilometers through 
a succession of villages, each with its mutely 
eloquent tale of devastation and general smash 
to tell; each with its group of contemptuously 
tolerant German soldiers on guard and its hand- 
ful of natives, striving feebly to piece together 
the broken and bankrupt fragments of their 
worldly affairs. 

Approaching Des Sarts more nearly we 
came to a longish stretch of highway, which 
the French had cleared of visual obstructions 
in anticipation of resistance by infantry in the 
event that the outer ring of defenses gave way 
before the German bombardment. It had all 
been labor in vain, for the town capitulated 
after the outposts fell; but it must have been 
very great labor. Any number of fine elm trees 
had been felled and their boughs, stripped now 
of leaves, stuck up like bare bones. There 
were holes in the metaled road where misaimed 
shells had descended, and in any one of these 
holes you might have buried a horse. A little 
gray church stood off by itself upon the plain. 
It had been homely enough to start with. 
Now with its steeple shorn away and one of 
its two belfry windows obliterated by a stray- 
ing shot it had a rakish, cock-eyed look to it. 

Just beyond where the church was our 

chauffeur halted the car in obedience to an 

order from the staff officer who had been 

detailed by Major von Abercron, commandant 

[3021 



BIG GUNS IN FRANCE 



of Maubeuge, to accompany us on this par- 
ticular excursion. Our guide pointed off to the 
right. "There," he said, "is where we dropped 
the first of our big ones when we were trying 
to get the range of the fort. You see our 
guns were posted at a point between eight and 
nine kilometers away and at the start we over- 
shot a trifle. Still to the garrison yonder it 
must have been an unhappy foretaste of what 
they might shortly expect, when they saw the 
forty-twos striking here in this field: and saw 
what execution they did among the cabbage 
and the beet patches." 

We left the car and, following our guide, 
went to look. Spaced very neatly at intervals 
apart of perhaps a hundred and fifty yards a 
series of craters broke the surface of the earth. 
Considering the tools which dug them they 
were rather symmetrical craters, not jagged 
and gouged, but with smooth walls and each 
in shape a perfect funnel. We measured roughly 
a typical specimen. Across the top it was 
between fifty and sixty feet in diameter, and 
it sloped down evenly for a depth of eighteen 
feet in the chalky soil to a pointed bottom, 
where two men would have difficulty standing 
together without treading upon each other's 
toes. Its sides were lined with loose pellets 
of earth of the average size of a tennis ball, 
and when we slid down into the hole these 
rounded clods accompanied us in small av- 
alanches. 

[303] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



We were filled with astonishment, first, that 
an explosive grenade, weighing upward of a 
ton, could be so constructed that it would 
penetrate thus far into firm and solid earth 
before it exploded; and, second, that it could 
make such a neat saucer of a hole when it did 
explode. But there was a still more amazing 
thing to be pondered. Of the earth which 
had been dispossessed from the crevasse, 
amounting to a great many wagonloads, no 
sign remained. It was not heaped up about 
the lips of the funnel; it was not visibly scat- 
tered over the nearermost furrows of that truck 
field. So far as we might tell it was utterly 
gone; and from that we deduced that the force 
of the explosion had been sufficient to pul- 
verize the clay so finely and cast it so far and 
so wide that it fell upon the surface in a fine 
shower, leaving no traces unless one made a 
minute search for it. Noting the wonder 
upon our faces, the officer was moved to speak 
further in a tone of sincere admiration, touch- 
ing on the capabilities of the crowning achieve- 
ment of the Krupp works: 

"Pretty strong medicine, eh? Well, wait 
until I have shown you American gentlemen 
what remains of the fort; then you will better 
understand. Even here, out in the open, for 
a radius of a hundred and fifty meters, any 
man, conceding he wasn't killed outright, 
would be knocked senseless and after that for 
hours, even for days, perhaps, he would be 
[304] 



BIG GUNS IN FRANCE 



entirely unnerved. The force of the concus- 
sion appears to have that effect upon persons 
who are at a considerable distance — it rips 
their nerves to tatters. Some seem numbed 
and dazed; others develop an acute hysteria. 

"Highly interesting, is it not? Listen then; 
here is something even more interesting: 
Within an inclosed space, where there is a roof 
to hold in the gas generated by the explosion 
or where there are reasonably high walls, the 
man who escapes being torn apart in the 
instant of impact, or who escapes being crushed 
to death by collapsing masonry, or killed by 
flying fragments, is exceedingly likely to choke 
to death as he lies temporarily paralyzed and 
helpless from the shock. I was at Liege and 
again here, and I know from my own observa- 
tions that this is true. At Liege particularly 
many of the garrison were caught and penned 
up in underground casements, and there we 
found them afterward dead, but with no marks 
of wounds upon them — they had been as- 
phyxiated." 

I suppose in times of peace the speaker 
was a reasonably kind man and reasonably 
regardful of the rights of his fellowmen. Cer- 
tainly he was most courteous to us and most 
considerate; but he described this slaughter- 
pit scene with the enthusiasm of one who was 
a partner in a most creditable and worthy 
enterprise. 

Immediately about Des Sarts stood many 
[305] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



telegraph poles in a row, for here the road, 
which was the main road from Paris to Brus- 
sels, curved close up under the grass-covered 
bastions. All the telegraph wires had been 
cut, and they dangled about the bases of the 
poles in snarled tangles like love vines. The 
ditches paralleling the road were choked with 
felled trees, and, what with the naked limbs, 
were as spiky as shad spines. Of the small 
cottages which once had stood in the vicinity 
of the fort not one remained standing. Their 
sites were marked by flattened heaps of brick 
and plaster from which charred ends of rafters 
protruded. It was as though a gaint had sat 
himself down upon each little house in turn 
and squashed it to the foundation stones. 

As a fort Des Sarts dated back to 1883. 
I speak of it in the past tense, because the 
Germans had put it in that tense. As a fort, 
or as anything resembling a fort, it had ceased 
to be, absolutely. The inner works of it — 
the redan and the underground barracks, and 
the magazines, and all — were built after the 
style followed by military engineers back in 
1883, having revetments faced up with brick 
and stone; but only a little while ago — in the 
summer of 1913, to be exact — the job of in- 
closing the original works with a glacis of a 
newer type had been completed. So when 
the Germans came along in the first week of 
September it was in most respects made over 
into a modern fort. No doubt the reenforce- 
[306] 



BIG GUNS IN FRANCE 



ments of reserves that hurried into it to 
strengthen the regular garrison counted them- 
selves lucky men to have so massive and 
stout a shelter from which to fight an enemy 
who must work in the open against them. 
Poor devils, their hopes crumbled along with 
their walls when the Germans brought up the 
forty-twos. 

We entered in through a breach in the first 
parapet and crossed, one at a time, on a 
tottery wooden bridge which was propped 
across a fosse half full of rubble, and so came 
to what had been the heart of the fort of Des 
Sarts. Had I not already gathered some no- 
tion of the powers for destruction of those 
one-ton, four-foot-long shells, I should have 
said that the spot where we halted had been 
battered and crashed at for hours; that scores 
and perhaps hundreds of bombs had been 
plumped into it. Now, though, I was prepared 
to believe the German captain when he said 
probably not more than five or six of the devil 
devices had struck this target. Make it six 
for good measure. Conceive each of the six 
as having been dammed by a hurricane and 
sired by an earthquake, and as being related 
to an active volcano on one side of the family 
and to a flaming meteor on the other. Con- 
ceive it as falling upon a man-made, masonry- 
walled burrow in the earth and being followed 
in rapid succession by five of its blood breth- 
ren; then you will begin to get some fashion 
[307] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



of mental photograph of the result. I confess 
myself as unable to supply any better suggestion 
for a comparison. Nor shall I attempt to 
describe the picture in any considerable detail. 
I only know that for the first time in my life 
I realized the full and adequate meaning of 
the word chaos. The proper definition of it 
was spread broadcast before my eyes. 

Appreciating the impossibility of compre- 
hending the full scope of the disaster which 
here had befallen, or of putting it concretely 
into words if I did comprehend it, I sought 
to pick out small individual details, which 
was hard to do, too, seeing that all things 
were jumbled together so. This had been a 
series of cunningly buried tunnels and arcades, 
with cozy subterranean dormitories opening off 
of side passages, and still farther down there 
had been magazines and storage spaces. Now 
it was all a hole in the ground, and the force 
which blasted it out had then pulled the hole 
in behind itself. We stood on the verge, 
looking downward into a chasm which seemed 
to split its way to infinite depths, although in 
fact it was probably not nearly so deep as it 
appeared. If we looked upward there, forty 
feet above our heads, was a wide riven gap 
in the earth crust. 

Near me I discerned a litter of metal frag- 
ments. From such of the scraps as retained 
any shape at all, I figured that they had been 
part of the protective casing of a gun mounted 
[308] 



BIG GUNS IN FRANCE 



somewhere above. The missile which wrecked 
the gun flung its armor down here. I searched 
my brain for a simile which might serve to 
give a notion of the present state of that steel 
jacket. I didn't find the one I wanted, but if 
you will think of an earthenware pot which 
has been thrown from a very high building 
upon a brick sidewalk you may have some idea 
of what I saw. 

At that, it was no completer a ruin than 
any of the surrounding debris. Indeed, in 
the whole vista of annihilation but two ob- 
jects remained recognizably intact, and these, 
strange to say, were two iron bed frames 
bolted to the back wall of what I think must 
have been a barrack room for officers. The 
room itself was no longer there. Brick, mortar, 
stone, concrete, steel reinforcements, iron 
props, the hard-packed earth, had been ripped 
out and churned into indistinguishable bits, 
but those two iron beds hung fast to a dis- 
colored patch of plastering, though the floor 
was gone from beneath them. Seemingly they 
were hardly damaged. One gathered that a 
42-centimeter shell possessed in some degree 
the freakishness which we associate with the 
behavior of cyclones. 

We were told that at the last, when the guns 
had been silenced and dismounted and the walls 
had been pierced and the embrasures blown 
bodily away, the garrison, or what was left 
of it, fled to these lowermost shelters. But the 
[309] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



burrowing bombs found the refugees out and 
killed them, nearly all, and those of them 
who died were still buried beneath our feet in 
as hideous a sepulcher as ever was digged. 
There was no getting them out from that tomb. 
The Crack of Doom will find them still there, 
I guess. 

To reach a portion of Des Sarts, as yet un- 
visited, we skirted the gape of the crater, 
climbing over craggy accumulations of wreck- 
age, and traversed a tunnel with an arched 
roof and mildewed brick walls, like a wine 
vault. The floor of it was littered with the 
knapsacks and water bottles of dead or cap- 
tured men, with useless rifles broken at the 
stocks and bent in the barrels, and with such- 
like riffle. At the far end of the passage we 
came out into the open at the back side of the 
fort. 

"Right here," said the officer who was pilot- 
ing us, "I witnessed a sight which made a 
deeper impression upon me than anything I 
have seen in this campaign. After the white 
flag had been hoisted by the survivors and we 
had marched in, I halted my men just here at 
the entrance to this arcade. We didn't dare 
venture into the redan, for sporadic explosions 
were still occurring in the ammunition stores. 
Also there were fires raging. Smoke was 
pouring thickly out of the mouth of the tunnel. 
It didn't seem possible that there could be 
anyone alive back yonder. 
[3101 



BIG GUNS IN FRANCE 



"All of a sudden, men began to come out 
of the tunnel. They came and came until 
there were nearly two hundred of them — 
French reservists mostly. They were crazy 
men — crazy for the time being, and still crazy, 
I expect, some of them. They came out stag- 
gering, choking, falling down and getting up 
again. You see, their nerves were gone. The 
fumes, the gases, the shock, the fire, what 
they had endured and what they had escaped — 
all these had distracted them. They danced, 
sang, wept, laughed, shouted in a sort of 
maudlin frenzy, spun about deliriously until 
they dropped. They were deafened, and some 
of them could not see but had to grope their 
way. I remember one man who sat down and 
pulled off his boots and socks and threw them 
away and then hobbled on in his bare feet 
until he cut the bottoms of them to pieces. 
I don't care to see anything like that again — 
even if it is my enemies that suffer it." 

He told it so vividly, that standing alongside 
of him before the tunnel opening I could see 
the procession myself — those two hundred men 
who had drained horror to its lees and were 
drunk on it. 

We went to Fort Boussois, some four miles 
away. It was another of the keys to the 
town. It was taken on September sixth; on 
the next day, September seventh, the citadel 
surrendered. Here, in lieu of the 42-centimeter, 
which was otherwise engaged for the moment, 
[3111 



PATHS OF GLORY 



the attacking forces brought into play an 
Austrian battery of 30-centimeter guns. So far 
as I have been able to ascertain this was the 
only Austrian command which had any part 
in the western campaigns. The Austrian gun- 
ners shelled the fort until the German in- 
fantry had been massed in a forest to the 
northward. Late in the afternoon the in- 
fantry charged across a succession of cleared 
fields and captured the outer slopes. With 
these in their possession it didn't take them 
very long to compel the surrender of Fort 
Boussois, especially as the defenders had al- 
ready been terribly cut up by the artillery fire. 

The Austrians must have been first-rate 
marksmen. One of their shells fell squarely 
upon the rounded dome of a big armored turret 
which was sunk in the earth and chipped off 
the top of it as you would chip your breakfast 
egg. The men who manned the guns in that 
revolving turret must all have died in a flash 
of time. The impact of the blow was such 
that the leaden solder which filled the inter- 
stices of the segments of the turret was squeezed 
out from between the plates in curly strips, 
like icing from between the layers of a misused 
birthday cake. 

Back within the main works we saw where a 
shell had bored a smooth, round orifice through 
eight meters of earth and a meter and a half 
of concrete and steel plates. Peering into the 
shaft we could make out the floor of a tunnel 
[3121 



BIG GUNS IN FRANCE 



some thirty feet down. To judge by its ef- 
fects, this shell had been of a different type 
from any others whose work we had witnessed. 
Apparently it had been devised to excavate 
holes rather than to explode, and when we 
asked questions about it we speedily ascer- 
tained that our guide did not care to discuss 
the gun which had inflicted this particular 
bit of damage. 

"It is not permitted to speak of this matter," 
he said in explanation of his attitude. "It is 
a military secret, this invention. We call it 
a mine gun." 

Every man to his taste. I should have 
called it a well-digger. 

Erect upon the highest stretch of riddled 
walls, with his legs spraddled far apart and his 
arms jerking in expressive gestures, he told 
us how the German infantry had advanced 
across the open ground. It had been hard, he 
said, to hold the men back until the order for 
the charge was given, and then they burst 
from their cover and came on at a dead run, 
cheering. 

"It was very fine," he added. "Very 
glorious." 

"Did you have any losses in the charge?" 
asked one of our party. 

"Oh, yes," he answered, as though that part 

of the proceeding was purely an incidental 

detail and of no great consequence. "We 

lost many men here — very many — several 

[313] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



thousands, I think. Most of them are buried 
where you see those long ridges in the second 
field beyond." 

In a sheltered corner of a redoubt, close up 
under a parapet and sheathed on its inner 
side with masonry, was a single grave. The 
pounding feet of many fighting men had 
beaten the mound flat, but a small wooden 
cross still stood in the soil, and on it in French 
were penciled the words: 

"Here lies Lieutenant Verner, killed in the 
charge of battle." 

His men must have thought well of the 
lieutenant to take the time, in the midst of 
the defense, to bury him in the place where 
he fell, for there were no other graves to be 
seen within the fort. 



[3141 



CHAPTER XIII 
THOSE YELLOW PINE BOXES 



IT was late in the short afternoon, and get- 
ting close on to twilight, when we got 
back into the town. Except for the sol- 
diers there was little life stirring in the 
twisting streets. There was a funeral or so 
in progress. It seemed to us that always, 
no matter where we stopped, in whatsoever 
town or at whatsoever hour, some dead sol- 
dier was being put away. Still, I suppose 
we shouldn't have felt any surprise at that. 
By now half of Europe was one great funeral. 
Part of it was on crutches and part of it was 
in the graveyard and the rest of it was in 
the field. 

Daily in these towns back behind the firing 
lines a certain percentage of the invalided and 
the injured, who had been brought thus far 
before their condition became actually serious, 
would die; and twice daily, or oftener, the 
dead would be buried with military honors. 
[315] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



So naturally we were eyewitnesses to a great 
many of these funerals. Somehow they im- 
pressed me more than the sight of dead men 
being hurriedly shoveled under ground on the 
battle front where they had fallen. Perhaps 
it was the consciousness that those who had 
these formal, separate burials were men who 
came alive out of the righting, and who, even 
after being stricken, had a chance for life and 
then lost it. Perhaps it was the small show 
of ceremony and ritual which marked each one 
— the firing squad, the clergyman in his robes, 
the tramping escort — that left so enduring 
an impress upon my mind. I did not try to 
analyze the reasons; but I know my com- 
panions felt as I did. 

I remember quite distinctly the very first of 
these funerals that I witnessed. Possibly I 
remember it with such distinctness because 
it was the first. On our way to the advance 
positions of the Germans we had come as far 
as Chimay, which is an old Belgian town just 
over the frontier from France. I was sitting 
on a bench just outside the doorway of a 
parochial school conducted by nuns, which 
had been taken over by the conquerors and 
converted into a temporary receiving hospital 
for men who were too seriously wounded to 
stand the journey up into Germany. All the 
surgeons on duty here were Germans, but the 
nursing force Was about equally divided be- 
tween nuns and Lutheran deaconesses who had 
[3161 



THOSE YELLOW PINE BOXES 

been brought overland for this duty. Also 
there were several volunteer nurses — the wife 
of an officer, a wealthy widow from Dusseldorf 
and a school-teacher from Coblenz among them. 
Catholic and Protestant, Belgian and French 
and German, they all labored together, cheer- 
fully and earnestly doing drudgery of the most 
exacting, the most unpleasant sorts. 

One of the patronesses of the hospital, who 
was also its manager ex officio, had just left 
with a soldier chauffeur for a guard and a 
slightly wounded major for an escort. She was 
starting on a three-hundred-mile automobile 
run through a half subdued and dangerous 
country, meaning to visit base hospitals along 
the German frontier until she found a supply 
of anti-tetanus serum. Lockjaw, developing 
from seemingly trivial wounds in foot or hand, 
had already killed six men at Chimay within 
a week. Four more were dying of the same 
disease. So, since no able-bodied men could 
be spared from the overworked staffs of the 
lazarets, she was going for a stock of the serum 
which might save still other victims. She 
meant to travel day and night, and if a bullet 
didn't stop her and if the automobile didn't 
go through a temporary bridge she would 
be back, she thought, within forty-eight hours. 
She had already made several trips of the 
sort upon similar missions. Once her car had 
been fired at and once it had been wrecked, 
but she was going again. She was from near 
[317] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



Cologne, the wife of a rich manufacturer now 
serving as a captain of reserves. She hadn't 
heard from him in four weeks. She didn't know 
whether he still lived. She hoped he lived, 
she told us with simple fortitude, but of course 
these times one never knew. 

It was just before sundown. The nuns 
had gone upstairs to their little chapel for 
evening services. Through an open window of 
the chapel just above my head their voices, 
as they chanted the responses between the 
sonorous Latin phrases of the priest who had 
come to lead them in their devotions, floated 
out in clear sweet snatches, like the songs of 
vesper sparrows. Behind me, in a paved court- 
yard, were perhaps twenty wounded men lying 
on cots. They had been brought out of the 
building and put in the sunshine. They were 
on the way to recovery; at least most of them 
were. I sat facing a triangular-shaped square, 
which was flanked on one of its faces by a row 
of shuttered private houses and on another 
by the principal church of the town, a fifteenth- 
century structure with outdoor shrines snug- 
gled up under its eaves. Except for the 
chanting of the nuns and the braggadocio 
booming of a big cock-pigeon, which had flown 
down from the church tower to forage for spilt 
grain almost under my feet, the place was 
quiet. It was so quiet that when a little 
column of men turned into the head of the street 
which wound past the front of the church 
[318] 



THOSE YELLOW PINE BOXES 

and off to the left, I heard the measured 
tramping of their feet upon the stony road- 
way fully a minute before they came in sight. 
I was wondering what that rhythmic thumping 
meant, when one of the nursing sisters came 
and closed the high wooden door at my back, 
shutting off the view of the wounded men. H 

There appeared a little procession, headed 
by a priest in his robes and two altar-boys. 
At the heels of these three were six soldiers 
bearing upon their shoulders a wooden box 
painted a glaring yellow; and so narrow was 
the box and so shallow-looking, that on the 
instant the thought came to me that the 
poor clay inclosed therein must feel cramped 
in such scant quarters. Upon the top of the 
box, at its widest, highest point, rested a 
wreath of red flowers, a clumsy, spraddly 
wreath from which the red blossoms threatened 
to shake loose. Even at a distance of some 
rods I could tell that a man's inexpert fingers 
must have fashioned it. 

Upon the shoulders of the bearers the box 
swayed and jolted. 

Following it came, first, three uniformed 
officers, two German nurses and two sur- 
geons from another hospital, as I subse- 
quently learned; and following them half a 
company of soldiers bearing their rifles and 
wearing side arms. As the small cortege 
reached a point opposite us an officer snapped 
an order and everybody halted, and the gun- 
[3191 



PATHS OF GLORY 



butts of the company came down with a 
smashing abruptness upon the cobbles. At 
that moment two or three roughly clad civilians 
issued from a doorway near by. Being Bel- 
gians they had small cause to love the Ger- 
mans, but they stopped in their tracks and 
pulled off their caps. To pay the tribute of 
a bared head to the dead, even to the unknown 
dead, is in these Catholic countries of Europe 
as much a part of a man's rule of conduct 
as his religion is. 

The priest who led the line turned my way 
inquiringly. He did not have to wait long for 
what was to come, nor did I. Another gate 
farther along in the nunnery wall opened and 
out came six more soldiers, bearing another 
of these narrow-shouldered coffins, and ac- 
companied by a couple of nurses, an officer 
and an assistant surgeon. At sight of them 
the soldiers brought their pieces up to a 
salute, and held the posture rigidly until the 
second dead man in his yellow box had joined 
the company of the first dead man in his. 

Just before this happened, though, one of 
the nurses of the nunnery hospital did a thing 
which I shall never forget. She must have 
seen that the first coffin had flowers upon it, and 
in the same instant realized that the coffin 
in whose occupant she had a more direct 
interest was bare. So she left the straggling 
line and came running back. The wall streamed 
with woodbine, very glorious in its autumnal 
[3201 



THOSE YELLOW PINE BOXES 

flamings. She snatched a trailer of the red 
and yellow leaves down from where it clung, 
and as she hurried back her hands worked with 
magic haste, making it into a wreath. She 
reached the second squad of bearers and 
put her wreath upon the lid of the box, and 
then sought her place with the other nurses. 
The guns went up with a snap upon the shoul- 
ders of the company. The soldiers* feet 
thudded down all together upon the stones, 
and with the priest reciting his office the 
procession passed out of sight, going toward 
the burial ground at the back of the town. 
Presently, when the shadows were thickening 
into gloom and the angelus bells were ringing 
in the church, I heard, a long way off, the 
rattle of the rifles as the soldiers fired good- 
night volleys over the graves of their dead 
comrades. 

On the next day, at Hirson, which was 
another of our stopping points on the journey 
to the front, we saw the joint funeral of seven 
men leaving the hospital where they had died 
during the preceding twelve hours, and I 
shan't forget that picture either. There was 
a vista bounded by a stretch of one of those 
unutterably bleak backways of a small and 
shabby French town. The rutted street twisted 
along between small gray plaster houses, with 
ugly, unnecessary gable-ends, which faced the 
road at wrong angles. Small groups of towns- 
people stood against the walls to watch. 
[3213 



PATHS OF GLORY 



There was also a handful of idling soldiers who 
watched from the gateway of the house where 
they were billeted. 

Seven times the bearers entered the hospital 
door, and each time as they reappeared, 
bringing one of the narrow,, gaudy, yellow 
boxes, the officers lined up at the door would 
salute and the soldiers in double lines at the 
opposite side of the road would present arms, 
and then, as the box was lifted upon the 
wagon waiting to receive it, would smash 
their guns down on the bouldered road with 
a crash. When the job of bringing forth the 
dead was done the wagon stood loaded pretty 
nearly to capacity. Four of the boxes rested 
crosswise upon the flat wagon-bed and the other 
three were racked lengthwise on top of them. 
Here, too, was a priest in his robes, and here 
were two altar boys who straggled, so that as the 
procession started the priest was moved to 
break off his chanting long enough to chide 
his small attendants and wave them back 
into proper alignment. With the officers, 
the nurses and the surgeons all marching 
afoot marched also three bearded civilians 
in frock coats, having the air about them of 
village dignitaries. From their presence in 
such company we deduced that one of the 
seven silent travelers on the wagon must be a 
French soldier, or else that the Germans had 
seen fit to require the attendance of local 
functionaries at the burial of dead Germans. 
[3221 



THOSE YELLOW PINE BOXES 

As the cortege — I suppose you might call 
it that — went by where I stood with my 
friends, I saw that upon the sides of the coffins 
names were lettered in big, straggly black 
letters. I read two of the names — Werner was 
one, Vogel was the other. Somehow I felt 
an acuter personal interest in Vogel and 
Werner than in the other five whose names 
I could not read. 

Wherever we stopped in Belgium or in 
France or in Germany these soldiers' funerals 
were things of daily, almost of hourly occur- 
rence. And in Maubeuge on this evening, 
even though dusk had fallen, two of the in- 
evitable yellow boxes, mounted upon a two- 
wheeled cart, were going to the burying 
ground. We figured the cemetery men would 
fill the graves by lantern light; and knowing 
something of their hours of employment we 
imagined that with this job disposed of they 
would probably turn to and dig graves by night, 
making them ready against the needs of the 
following morning. The new graves always 
were ready. They were made in advance, 
and still there were rarely enough of them, no 
matter how long or how hard the diggers kept 
at their work. At Aix-la-Chapelle, for ex- 
ample, in the principal cemetery the sexton's 
men dug twenty new graves every morning. 
By evening there would be twenty shaped 
mounds of clay where the twenty holes had 
been. The crop of the dead was the one sure 
[323] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



crop upon which embattled Europe might 
count. That harvest could not fail the war- 
ring nations, however scanty other yields might 
be. 

In the towns in occupied territory the 
cemeteries were the only actively and con- 
stantly busy spots to be found, except the 
hospitals. Every schoolhouse was a hospital; 
indeed I think there can be no schoolhouse 
in the zone of actual hostilities that has not 
served such a purpose. In their altered as- 
pects we came to know these schoolhouses 
mighty well. We would see the wounded going 
in on stretchers and the dead coming out in 
boxes. We would see how the blackboards, 
still scrawled over perhaps with the chalked 
sums of lessons which never were finished, 
now bore pasted-on charts dealing in nurses' 
and surgeons' cipher-manual, with the bodily 
plights of the men in the cots and on the 
mattresses beneath. We would see classrooms 
where plaster casts and globe maps and dusty 
textbooks had been cast aside in heaps to 
make room on desktops and shelves for drugs 
and bandages and surgical appliances. We 
would see the rows of hooks intended originally 
for the caps and umbrellas of little people; but 
now from each hook dangled the ripped, blood- 
ied garments of a soldier — gray for a German, 
brown-tan for an Englishman, blue-and-red 
for a Frenchman or a Belgian. By the German 
rule a wounded man's uniform must be brought 
[3241 



THOSE YELLOW PINE BOXES 



back with him from the place where he fell and 
kept handily near him, with tags on it, to 
prove its proper identity, and there it must 
stay until its owner needs it again — if ever he 
needs it again. 

We would see these things, and we would 
wonder if these schoolhouses could ever shake 
off the scents and the stains and the mem- 
ories of these present grim visitations — won- 
der if children would ever frolic any more in 
the courtyards where the ambulances stood 
now with red drops trickling down from their 
beds upon the gravel. But that, on our part, 
was mere morbidness born of the sights we 
saw. Children forget even more quickly than 
their elders forget, and we knew, from our own 
experience, how quickly the populace of a 
French or Flemish community could rally 
back to a colorable counterfeit of their old 
sprightliness, once the immediate burdens of 
affliction and captivity had been lifted from 
off them. 

From a jumbled confusion of recollection 
of these schoolhouse-hospitals sundry inci- 
dental pictures stick out in my mind as I 
write this article. I can shut my eyes and 
visualize the German I saw in the little parish 
school building in the abandoned hamlet of 
Colligis near by the River Aisne. He was in 
a room with a dozen others, all suffering from 
chest wounds. He had been pierced through 
both lungs with a bullet, and to keep him 
[ 325 ] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



from choking to death the attendants had tied 
him in a half erect posture. A sort of ham- 
mocklike sling passed under his arms, and a 
rope ran from it to a hook in a wall and was 
knotted fast to the hook. He swung there, 
neither sitting nor lying, fighting for the 
breath of life, with an unspeakable misery 
looking out from his eyes; and he was too far 
spent to lift a hand to brush away the flies 
that swarmed upon his face and his lips and 
upon his bare, throbbing throat. The flies 
dappled the faces of his fellow sufferers with 
loathsome black dots; they literally masked his. 
I preserve a memory which is just as vivid 
of certain things I saw in a big institution in 
Laon. Although in German hands, and nom- 
inally under German control, the building was 
given over entirely to crippled and ailing 
French prisoners. These patients were minded 
and fed by their own people and attended by 
captured French surgeons. In our tour of the 
place I saw only two men wearing the German 
gray. One was the armed sentry who stood 
at the gate to see that no recovering inmate 
slipped out, and the other was a German sur- 
geon-general who was making his daily round 
of inspection of the hospitals and had brought 
us along with him. Of the native contingent 
the person who appeared to be in direct charge 
was a handsome, elderly lady, tenderly solicitous 
of the frowziest Turco in the wards and ex- 
quisitely polite, with a frozen politeness, to 
[326] 



THOSE YELLOW PINE BOXES 

the German officer. When he saluted her 
she bowed to him deeply and ceremoniously 
and silently. I never thought until then that 
a bow could be so profoundly executed and 
yet so icily cold. It was a lesson in congealed 
manners. 

As we were leaving the room a nun serving 
as a nurse hailed the German and told him 
one of her charges was threatening to die, 
not because of his wound, but because he had 
lost heart and believed himself to be dying. 

"Where is he?" asked the German. 

"Yonder," she said, indicating a bundled-up 
figure on a pallet near the door. A drawn, 
hopeless face of a half -grown boy showed from 
the huddle of blankets. The surgeon-general 
cast a quick look at the swathed form and then 
spoke in an undertone to a French regimental 
surgeon on duty in the room. Together the two 
approached the lad. 

"My son," said the German to him in 
French, "I am told you do not feel so well 
to-day." 

The boy-soldier whispered an answer and 
waggled his head despondently. The German 
put his hand on the youth's forehead. 

"My son," he said, "listen to me. You are 
not going to die — I promise you that you shall 
not die. My colleague here" — he indicated 
the French doctor* — "stands ready to make you 
the same promise. If you won't believe a 
German, surely you will take your own coun- 
[3271 



PATHS OF GLORY 



tryman's professional word for it," and he 
smiled a little smile under his gray mustache. 
"Between us we are going to make you well 
and send you, when this war is over, back to 
your mother. But you must help us; you must 
help us by being brave and confident. Is it 
not so, doctor?" he added, again addressing 
the' French physician, and the Frenchman 
nodded to show it was so and sat down along- 
side the youngster to comfort him further. 

As we left the room the German surgeon 
turned, and looking round I saw that once 
again he saluted the patrician French lady, 
and this time as she bowed the ice was all 
melted from her bearing. She must have 
witnessed the little byplay; perhaps she had 
a son of her own in service. There were 
mighty few mothers in France last fall who did 
not have sons in service. 

Yet one of the few really humorous recol- 
lections of this war that I preserve had to 
do with a hospital too; but this hospital was 
in England and we visited it on our way home 
to America. We went — two of us — in the com- 
pany of Lord Northcliffe, down into Surrey, 
to spend a day with old Lord Roberts. Within 
three weeks thereafter Lord Roberts was dead 
where no doubt he would have willed to die — 
at the front in France, with the sound of the 
guns in his ears, guarded in his last moments 
by the Ghurkas and the Sikhs of his beloved 
Indian contingent. But on this day of our 
[328] 



THOSE YELLOW PINE BOXES 



visit to him we found him a hale, kindly gen- 
tleman of eighty-two who showed us his mar- 
velous collection of firearms and Oriental 
relics and the field guns, all historic guns by 
the way, which he kept upon the terraces of 
his mansion house, and who told us, among 
other things, that in his opinion our own 
Stonewall Jackson was perhaps the greatest 
natural military genius the world had ever 
produced. Leaving his house we stopped, on 
our return to London, at a hospital for soldiers 
in the grounds of Ascot Race Course scarcely 
two miles from Lord Roberts' place. The re- 
freshment booths and the other rooms at the 
back and underside of the five-shilling stand 
had been thrown together, except the barber's 
shop, which was being converted into an oper- 
ating chamber; and, what with its tiled walls 
and high sloped ceiling and glass front, the 
place made a first-rate hospital. 

It contained beds for fifty men; but on this 
day there were less than twenty sick and crip- 
pled Tommies convalescing here. They had 
been brought out of France, out of wet and 
cold and filth, with hurried dressings on their 
hurts; and now they were in this bright, sweet, 
wholesome place, with soft beds under them 
and clean linen on their bodies, and flowers 
and dainties on the tables that stood alongside 
them, and the gentlefolk of the neighborhood 
to mind them as volunteer nurses. 

There were professional nurses, of course; 
f329l 



PATHS OF GLORY 



but, under them, the younger women of the 
wealthy families of this corner of Surrey were 
serving; and mighty pretty they all looked, 
too, in their crisp blue-and-white uniforms, 
with their arm badges and their caps, and their 
big aprons buttoned round their slim, athletic 
young bodies. I judge there were about three 
amateur nurses to each patient. Yet you 
could not rightly call them amateurs either; 
each of them had taken a short course in nursing, 
it seemed, and was amply competent to perform 
many of the duties a regular nurse must know. 

Lady Aileen Roberts was with us during our 
tour of the hospital. As a daily visitor and 
patroness she spent much of her time here 
and she knew most of the inmates by name. 
She halted alongside one bed to ask its occu- 
pant how he felt. He had been returned from 
the front suffering from pneumonia. 

He was an Irishman. Before he answered 
her he cast a quick look about the long hall. 
Afternoon tea was just being served, consisting, 
besides tea, of homemade strawberry jam and 
lettuce sandwiches made of crisp fresh bread, 
with plenty of butter; and certain elderly 
ladies had just arrived, bringing with them, 
among other contributions, sheaves of flowers 
and a dogcart loaded with hothouse fruit and 
a dozen loaves of plumcake, which last were 
still hot from the oven and which radiated a 
mouth-watering aroma as a footman bore 
them in behind his mistress. The patient 
[330] 



THOSE YELLOW PINE BOXES 

looked at all these and he sniffed; and a grin 
split his face and an Irish twinkle came into 
his eyes. 

"Thank you, me lady, for askin'," he said; 
"but I'm very much af eared I'm gettin' 
better." 

We might safely assume that the hospitals 
and the graveyard of Maubeuge would be 
busy places that evening, thereby offering 
strong contrasts to the rest of the town. But 
I should add that we found two other busy 
spots, too: the railroad station — where the 
trains bringing wounded men continually shut- 
tled past — and the house where the com- 
mandant of the garrison had his headquarters. 
In the latter place, as guests of Major von 
Abercron, we met at dinner that night and 
again after dinner a strangely mixed company. 
We met many officers and the pretty American 
wife of an officer, Frau Elsie von Heinrich, 
late of Jersey City, who had made an ad- 
venturous trip in a motor ambulance from 
Germany to see her husband before he went 
to the front, and who sent regards by us to 
scores of people in her old home whose names 
I have forgotten. We met also a civilian 
guest of the commandant, who introduced 
himself as August Blankhertz and who turned 
out to be a distinguished big-game hunter and 
gentleman aeronaut. With Major von Aber- 
cron for a mate he sailed from St. Louis in the 
great balloon race for the James Gordon Ben- 
[3311 



PATHS OF GLORY 



nett Cup. They came down in the Canadian 
woods and nearly died of hunger and exposure 
before they found a lumber camp. Their 
balloon was called the Germania. There was 
another civilian, a member of the German 
secret-service staff, wearing the Norfolk jacket 
and the green Alpine hat and on a cord about 
his neck the big gold token of authority which 
invariably mark a representative of this branch 
of the German espionage bureau; and he was 
wearing likewise that transparent air of mys- 
tery which seemed always to go with the 
followers of his ingenious profession. 

During the evening the mayor of Maubeuge 
came, a bearded, melancholy gentleman, to 
confer with the commandant regarding a clash 
between a German under-officer and a house- 
hold of his constituents. Orderlies and at- 
tendants bustled in and out, and somebody 
played Viennese waltz songs on a piano, and 
altogether there was quite a gay little party 
in the parlor of this handsome house which the 
Germans had commandeered for the use of 
their garrison staff. 

At early bedtime, when we stepped out of 
the door of the lit-up mansion into the street, 
it was as though we had stepped into a far-off 
country. Except for the tramp of a sentry's 
hobbed boots over the sidewalks and the 
challenging call of another sentry round the 
corner the town was as silent as a town of 
tombs. All the people who remained in this 
[332] 



THOSE YELLOW PINE BOXES 

place had closed their forlorn shops where 
barren shelves and emptied showcases testified 
to the state of trade; and they had shut them- 
selves up in their houses away from sight of the 
invaders. We could guess what their thoughts 
must be. Their industries were paralyzed, 
and their liberties were curtailed, and every 
other house was a breached and worthless shell. 
Among ourselves we debated as we walked 
along to the squalid tavern where we had been 
quartered, which of the spectacles we had 
that day seen most fitly typified the fruitage 
of war — the shattered, haunted forts lying now 
in the moonlight beyond the town, or the 
brooding conquered, half-destroyed town itself. 
I guess, if it comes to that, they both typi- 
fied it. 



[333] 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE RED GLUTTON 



AS we went along next day through the 
town of Maubeuge we heard singing; 
and singing was a most rare thing to 
be hearing in this town. In a country 
where no one smiles any more who belongs in 
that country, singing is not a thing which you 
would naturally expect to hear. So we turned 
off of our appointed route. 

There was a small wine shop at the prow 
of a triangle of narrow streets. It had been a 
wine shop. It was now a beer shop. There 
had been a French proprietor; he had a German 
partner now. It had been only a few weeks — 
you could not as yet measure the interval of 
time in terms of months — since the Germans 
came and sat themselves down before Maubeuge 
and blew its defenses flat with their 42-centi- 
meter earthquakes and marched in and took it. 
It had been only these few weeks; but already 
the Germanizing brand of the conqueror was 

[3341 



THE RED GLUTTON 



seared deep in the galled flanks of this typically 
French community. The town-hall clock was 
made to tick German time, which varied by 
an even hour from French time. Tacked upon 
the door of the little cafe where we ate our 
meals was a card setting forth, with painful 
German particularity, the tariff which might 
properly be charged for food and for lodging 
and drink and what not; and it was done in 
German-Gothic script, all very angular and 
precise; and it was signed by His Excellency, 
the German commandant; and its prices were 
predicated on German logic and the estimated 
depth of a German wallet. You might read a 
newspaper printed in German characters, if so 
minded; but none printed in French, whether 
so minded or not. 

So when we entered in at the door of the 
little French wine shop where the three streets 
met, to find out who within had heart of grace 
to sing Strassburg, Strassburg, so lustily, 
lo and behold, it had been magically trans- 
formed into a German beer shop. It was, as 
we presently learned, the only beer shop in all 
of Maubeuge, and the reason for that was this: 
No sooner had the Germans cleared and 
opened the roads back across Belgium to their 
own frontiers than an enterprising tradesman 
of the Rhein country, who somehow had es- 
caped military service, loaded many kegs of 
good German beer upon trucks and brought 
his precious cargoes overland a hundred miles 
[335] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



and more southward. Certainly he could not 
have moved the lager caravan without the 
consent and aid of the Berlin war office. For 
all I know to the contrary he may have been 
financed in that competent quarter. That same 
morning I had seen a field weather station, 
mounted on an automobile, standing in front 
of our lodging place just off the square. It 
was going to the front to make and compile 
meteorological reports. A general staff who 
provided weather offices on wheels and printing 
offices on wheels — this last for the setting up 
and striking off of small proclamations and 
orders — might very well have bethought them- 
selves that the soldier in the field would be all 
the fitter for the job before him if stayed 
with the familiar malts of the Vaterland. 
Believe me, I wouldn't put it past them. 

Anyway, having safely reached Maubeuge, 
the far-seeing Rheinishman effected a working 
understanding with a native publican, which 
was probably a good thing for both, seeing 
that one had a stock of goods and a ready- 
made trade but no place to set up business, 
and that the other owned a shop, but had lost 
his trade and his stock-in-trade likewise. 
These two, the little, affable German and the 
tall, grave Frenchman, stood now behind their 
counter drawing off mugs of Pilsener as fast 
as their four hands could move. Their patrons, 
their most vocal and boisterous patrons, were 
a company of musketeers who had marched in 
[336] 



THE RED GLUTTON 



from the north that afternoon. As a rule the 
new levies went down into France on troop 
trains, but this company was part of a draft 
which for some reason came afoot. Without 
exception they were young men, husky and 
hearty and inspired with a beefish joviality at 
having found a place where they could ease their 
feet, and rest their legs, and slake their week-old 
thirst upon their own soothing brews. Being 
German they expressed their gratefulness in song. 
We had difficulty getting into the place, so 
completely was it filled. Men sat in the win- 
dow ledges, and in the few chairs that were 
available, and even in the fireplace, and on the 
ends of the bar, clunking their heels against 
the wooden baseboards. The others stood in 
such close order they could hardly clear their 
elbows to lift their glasses. The air was choky 
with a blended smell derived from dust and 
worn boot leather and spilt essences of hops 
and healthy, unwashed, sweaty bodies. On a 
chair in a corner stood a tall, tired and happy 
youth who beat time for the singing with an 
empty mug and between beats nourished him- 
self on drafts from a filled mug which he held 
in his other hand. With us was a German 
officer. He was a captain of reserves and a 
person of considerable wealth. He shoved his 
way to the bar and laid down upon its sloppy 
surface two gold coins and said something to 
a petty officer who was directing the distribu- 
tion of the refreshments. 
[337] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



The noncom. hammered for silence and, when 
he got it, announced that the Herr Hauptmann 
had donated twenty marks' worth of beer, 
all present being invited to cooperate in drink- 
ing it up, which they did, but first gave three 
cheers for the captain and three more for his 
American friends and afterward, while the re- 
plenished mugs radiated in crockery waves 
from the bar to the back walls, sang for us a 
song which, so far as the air was concerned, 
sounded amazingly like unto Every Little Move- 
ment Has a Meaning All Its Own. Their 
weariness was quite fallen away from them; 
they were like schoolboys on a frolic. Indeed, 
I think a good many of them were schoolboys. 

As we came out a private who stood in the 
doorway spoke to us in fair English. He had 
never been in America, but he had a brother 
living in East St. Louis and he wanted to 
know if any of us knew his brother. This was 
a common experience with us. Every third 
German soldier we met had a brother or a 
sister or somebody in America. This soldier 
could not have been more than eighteen years; 
the down on his cheeks was like corn silk. 
He told us he and his comrades were very glad 
to be going forward where there would be 
fighting. They had had no luck yet. There 
had been no fighting where they had been. I 
remembered afterward that luck was the word 
he used. 

We went back to the main street and for a 

[338] 



THE RED GLUTTON 



distance the roar of their volleying chorus 
followed us. Men and women stood at the 
doors of the houses along the way. They were 
silent and idle. Idleness and silence seemed 
always to have fallen as grim legacies upon the 
civilian populace of these captured towns; but 
the look upon their faces as they listened to the 
soldiers' voices was not hard to read. Their 
town was pierced by cannonballs where it was 
not scarified with fire; there was sorrow and 
the abundant cause for sorrow in every house; 
commerce was dead and credit was killed; 
and round the next turning their enemy sang 
his drinking song. I judge that the thrifty 
Frenchman who went partner with the German 
stranger in the beer traffic lost popularity that 
day among his fellow townsmen. 

We were bound for the railway station, 
which the Germans already had rechristened 
Bahnhof. Word had been brought to us that 
trains of wounded men and prisoners were due 
in the course of the afternoon from the front, 
and more especially from the right wing; and 
in this prospect we scented a story to be 
written. To reach the station we crossed the 
river Sambre, over a damaged bridge, and 
passed beneath the arched passageway of the 
citadel which the great Vauban built for the 
still greater Louis XIV, thinking, no doubt, 
when he built it, that it would always be potent 
to keep out any foe, however strong. Next 
to its stupid massiveness what most impressed 

[339] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



us this day was its utter uselessness as a pro- 
tection. The station stood just beyond the 
walls, with a park at one side of it, but the 
park had become a timber deadfall. At the 
approach of the enemy hundreds of splendid 
trees had been felled to clear the way for gun- 
fire from the inner defenses in the event that 
the Germans got by the outer circle of fort- 
resses. After the Germans took the forts, 
though, the town surrendered, so all this de- 
struction had been futile. There were acres 
of ragged stumps and, between the stumps, 
jungles of overlapping trunks and interlacing 
boughs from which the dead and dying leaves 
shook off in showers. One of our party, who 
knew something of forestry, estimated that 
these trees were about forty years old. 

"I suppose," he added speculatively, "that 
when this war ends these people will replant 
their trees. Then in another forty years or so 
another war will come and they will chop 
them all down again. On the whole I'm rather 
glad I don't live on this continent." 

The trains which were expected had not 
begun to arrive yet, so with two companions 
I sat on a bench at the back of the station, 
waiting. Facing us was a line of houses. One, 
the corner house, was a big black char. It had 
caught fire during the shelling and burned 
quite down. Its neighbors were intact, except 
for shattered chimneys and smashed doors 
and riddled windows. The concussion of a big 
[3401 



THE RED GLUTTON 



gunfire had shivered every window in this 
quarter of town. There being no sufficient stock 
of glass with which to replace the broken 
panes, and no way of bringing in fresh supplies, 
the owners of the damaged buildings had 
patched the holes with bits of planking filched 
from more complete ruins near by. Of course 
there were other reasons, too, if one stopped 
to sum them up: Few would have the money 
to buy fresh glass, even if there was any fresh 
glass to buy, and the local glaziers — such of 
them as survived — would be serving the colors. 
All France had gone to war and at this time 
of writing had not come back, except in drib- 
bling streams of wounded and prisoners. 

These ragged boards, sparingly nailed across 
the window sockets, gave the houses the air 
of wearing masks and of squinting at us 
through narrow eye slits. The railroad station 
was windowless, too, like all the buildings 
round about, but nobody had closed the open- 
ings here, and it gaped emptily in fifty places, 
and the raw, gusty winds of a North European 
fall searched through it. 

In this immediate neighborhood few of the 
citizens were to be seen. Even those houses 
which still were humanly habitable appeared 
to be untenanted; only soldiers were about, 
and not so very many of them. A hundred 
yards up the tracks, on a siding, a squad of 
men with a derrick and crane were hoisting 
captured French field guns upon flat cars to 
[341] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



be taken to Berlin and exhibited as spoils of con- 
quest for the benefit of the stay-at-homes. 
A row of these cannons, perhaps fifty in all, 
were ranked alongside awaiting loading and 
transportation. Except for the agonized whine 
of the tackle-blocks and the buzzing of the 
flies the place where we sat was pretty quiet. 
There were a million flies, and there seemed 
to be a billion. You wouldn't have thought, 
unless you had been there to see for yourself, 
that there were so many flies in the world. 
By the time this was printed the cold weather 
had cured Europe of its fly plague, but during 
the first three months I know that the track 
of war was absolutely sown with these vermin. 
Even after a night of hard frost they would 
be as thick as ever at midday — as thick and 
as clinging and as nasty. Go into any close, 
ill-aired place and no matter what else you 
might smell, you smelled flies too. 

As I sit and look back on what I myself 
have seen of it, this war seems to me to have 
been not so much a sight as a stench. Every- 
thing which makes for human happiness and 
human usefulness it has destroyed. What it 
has bred, along with misery and pain and 
fatted burying grounds, is a vast and loathsome 
stench and a universe of flies. 

The smells and the flies; they were here in 

this railroad station in sickening profusion. 

I call it a railroad station, although it had lost 

its functions as such weeks before. The only 

[3421 



THE RED GLUTTON 



trains which ran now were run by the Ger- 
mans for strictly German purposes, and so the 
station had become a victualing point for 
troops going south to the fighting and a way 
hospital for sick and wounded coming back 
from the fighting. What, in better days than 
these, had been the lunch room was a place 
for the redressing of hurts. Its high counters, 
which once held sandwiches and tarts and 
wine bottles, were piled with snowdrifts of 
medicated cotton and rolls of lint and buckets 
of antiseptic washes and drug vials. The 
ticket booth was an improvised pharmacy. 
Spare medical supplies filled the room where 
formerly fussy customs officers examined the 
luggage of travelers coming out of Belgium into 
France. Just beyond the platform a wooden 
booth, with no front to it, had been knocked 
together out of rough planking, and relays of 
cooks, with greasy aprons over their soiled gray 
uniforms, made vast caldrons of stews — always 
stews — and brewed so-called coffee by the 
gallon against the coming of those who would 
need it. The stuff was sure to be needed, all 
of it and more too. So they cooked and cooked 
unceasingly and never stopped to wipe a pan 
or clean a spoon. 

At our backs was the waiting room for first- 
class passengers, but no passengers of any class 
came to it any more, and so by common con- 
sent it was a sort of rest room for the Red 
Cross men, who mostly were Germans, but 
[3431 



PATHS OF GLORY 



with a few captured Frenchmen among them, 
still wearing their French uniforms. There were 
three or four French military surgeons — 
prisoners, to be sure, but going and coming 
pretty much as they pleased. The tacit ar- 
rangement was that the Germans should succor 
Germans and that the Frenchmen should 
minister to their own disabled countrymen 
among the prisoners going north, but in a 
time of stress — and that meant every time a 
train came in from the south or west — both 
nationalities mingled together and served, 
without regard for the color of the coat worn 
by those whom they served. 

Probably from the day it was put up this 
station had never been really and entirely 
clean. Judged by American standards Conti- 
nental railway stations are rarely ever clean, 
even when conditions are normal. Now that 
conditions were anything but normal, this 
Maubeuge station was incredibly and in- 
curably filthy. No doubt the German nursing 
sisters who were brought here tried at first, 
with their German love for orderliness, to keep 
the interior reasonably tidy; but they had been 
swamped by more important tasks. For two 
weeks now the wounded had been passing 
through by the thousands and the tens of 
thousands daily. So between trains the women 
dropped into chairs or down upon cots and 
took their rest in snatches. But their fingers 
didn't rest. Always their hands were busy 
[344] 



THE RED GLUTTON 



with the making of bandages and the fluffing of 
lint. 

By bits I learned something about three 
of the women who served on the so-called 
day shift, which meant that they worked from 
early morning until long after midnight. One 
was a titled woman who had volunteered for 
this duty. She was beyond middle age, plainly 
in poor health herself and everlastingly on 
the verge of collapse from weakness and ex- 
haustion. Her will kept her on her feet. The 
second was a professional nurse from one of 
the university towns — from Bonn, I think. 
She called herself Sister Bartholomew, for the 
German nurses who go to war take other 
names than their own, just as nuns do. She 
was a beautiful woman, tall and strong and 
round-faced, with big, fine gray eyes. Her 
energy had no limits. She ran rather than 
walked. She had a smile for every maimed 
man who was brought to her, but when the 
man had been treated, and had limped away 
or had been carried away, I saw her often 
wringing her hands and sobbing over the utter 
horror of it all. Then another sufferer would 
appear and she would wipe the tears off her 
cheeks and get to work again. The third — so 
an assistant surgeon confided to us — was the 
mistress of an officer at the front, a prostitute 
of the Berlin sidewalks, who enrolled for hos- 
pital work when her lover went to the front. 
She was a tall, dark, handsome girl, who looked 
[345] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



to be more Spaniard than German, and she 
was graceful and lithe even in the exceedingly 
shapeless costume of blue print that she wore. 
She was less deft than either of her associates 
but very willing and eager. As between the 
three — the noblewoman, the working woman 
and the woman of the street — the medical 
officials in charge made no distinction what- 
soever. Why should they? In this sisterhood 
of mercy they all three stood upon the same 
common ground. I never knew that slop jars 
were noble things until I saw women in these 
military lazarets bearing them in their arms; 
then to me they became as altar vessels. 

Lacking women to do it, the head surgeon 
had intrusted the task of clearing away the 
dirt to certain men. A sorry job they made 
of it. For accumulated nastiness that waiting 
room was an Augean stable and the two soldiers 
who dawdled about in it with brooms lacked 
woefully in the qualities of Hercules. Putting 
a broom in a man's hands is the best argument 
in favor of woman's suffrage that I know of, 
anyhow. A third man who helped at chores in 
the transformed lunch room had gathered up 
and piled together in a heap upon the ground 
near us a bushel or so of used bandages — grim 
reminders left behind after the last train went 
by — and he had touched a match to the heap 
in an effort to get rid of it by fire. By reason 
of what was upon them the clothes burned 
slowly, sending up a smudge of acrid smoke to 
[3461 



THE RED GLUTTON 



mingle with smells of carbolic acid and iodo- 
form, and the scent of boiling food, and of 
things infinitely less pleasant than these. 

Presently a train rolled in and we crossed 
through the building to the trackside to watch 
what would follow. Already we had seen a 
sufficiency of such trains; we knew before it 
came what it would be like: In front the 
dumpy locomotive, with a soldier engineer in 
the cab; then two or three box cars of prisoners, 
with the doors locked and armed guards 
riding upon the roofs; then two or three 
shabby, misused passenger coaches, contain- 
ing injured officers and sometimes injured 
common soldiers, too; and then, stretching 
off down the rails, a long string of box cars, 
each of which would be bedded with straw 
and would contain for furniture a few rough 
wooden benches ranging from side to side. 
And each car would contain ten or fifteen or 
twenty, or even a greater number, of sick and 
crippled men. 

Those who could sit were upon the hard 
benches, elbow to elbow, packed snugly in. 
Those who were too weak to sit sprawled 
upon the straw and often had barely room 
in which to turn over, so closely were they 
bestowed. It had been days since they had 
started back from the field hospitals where 
they had had their first-aid treatment. They 
had moved by sluggish stages with long halts 
in between. Always the wounded must wait 
[347] 



PATHS OP GLOEY 



upon the sidings while the troop trains from 
home sped down the cleared main line to the 
smoking front; that was the merciless but 
necessary rule. The man who got himself 
crippled became an obstacle to further progress, 
a drag upon the wheels of the machine; whereas 
the man who was yet whole and fit was the man 
whom the generals wanted. So the fresh grist 
for the mill, the raw material, if you will, was 
expedited upon its way to the hoppers; that 
which already had been ground up was rela- 
tively of the smallest consequence. 

Because of this law, which might not be 
broken or amended, these wounded men 
would, perforce, spend several days aboard 
train before they could expect to reach the 
base hospitals upon German soil, Maubeuge 
being at considerably less than midway of 
the distance between starting point and prob- 
able destination. Altogether the trip might 
last a week or even two weeks — a trip that 
ordinarily would have lasted less than twelve 
hours. Through it these men, who were 
messed and mangled in every imaginable 
fashion, would wallow in the dirty matted 
straw, with nothing except that thin layer 
of covering between them and the car floors 
that jolted and jerked beneath them. We 
knew it and they knew it, and there was 
nothing to be done. Their wounds would 
fester and be hot with fever. Their clotted 
bandages would clot still more and grow stiffer 
[348] 



THE RED GLUTTON 



and harder with each dragging hour. Those 
who lacked overcoats and blankets — and some 
there were who lacked both — would half 
freeze at night. For food they would have 
slops dished up for them at such stopping 
places as this present one, and they would 
slake their thirst on water drawn from con- 
taminated wayside wells and be glad of the 
chance. Gangrene would come, and blood 
poison, and all manner of corruption. Tetanus 
would assuredly claim its toll. Indeed, these 
horrors were already at work among them. I 
do not tell it to sicken my reader, but because 
I think I should tell it that he may have a 
fuller conception of what this fashionable in- 
stitution of war means — we could smell this 
train as we could smell all the trains which 
followed after it, when it was yet fifty yards 
away from us. 

Be it remembered, furthermore, that no sur- 
geon accompanied this afflicted living freight- 
age, that not even a qualified nurse traveled 
with it. According to the classifying processes 
of those in authority on the battle lines these 
men were lightly wounded men, and it was 
presumed that while en route they would be 
competent to minister to themselves and to 
one another. Under the grading system em- 
ployed by the chief surgeons a man, who was 
still all in one piece and who probably would 
not break apart in transit, was designated as 
being lightly wounded. This statement is no 
[3491 



PATHS OF GLORY 



attempt upon my part to indulge in levity 
concerning the most frightful situation I have 
encountered in nearly twenty years of active 
newspaper work; it is the sober, unexaggerated 
truth. 

And so these lightly wounded men — men 
with their jaws shot away, men with holes in 
their breasts and their abdomens, men with 
their spine tips splintered, men with their arms 
and legs broken, men with their hands and feet 
shredded by shrapnel, men with their scalps 
ripped open, men with their noses and their 
ears and their fingers and toes gone, men 
jarred to the very marrow of their bones by 
explosives — these men, for whom ordinarily 
soft beds would have been provided and expert 
care and special food, came trundling up along- 
side that noisome station; and, through the 
door openings from where they were housed 
like dumb beasts, they looked out at us with 
the glazed eyes of dumb suffering beasts. 

As the little toylike European cars halted, 
bumping together hard, orderlies went run- 
ning down the train bearing buckets of soup, 
and of coffee and of drinking water, and loaves 
of the heavy, dark German bread. Behind 
them went other men — bull-necked strong men 
picked for this job because of their strength. 
Their task was to bring back in their arms 
or upon their shoulders such men as were past 
walking. There were no stretchers. There 
was no time for stretchers. Behind this train 
[3501 



THE RED GLUTTON 



would be another one just like it and behind 
that one, another, and so on down an eighty- 
mile stretch of dolorous way. And this, mind 
you, was but one of three lines carrying out 
of France and Belgium into Germany victims 
of the war to be made well again in order that 
they might return and once more be fed as 
tidbits into the maw of that war; it was but 
one of a dozen or more such streams, thread- 
ing back from as many battle zones to the 
countries engaged in this wide and ardent 
scheme of mutual extermination. 

Half a minute after the train stopped a 
procession was moving toward us, made up 
of men who had wriggled down or who had 
been eased down out of the cars, and who 
were coming to the converted buffet room 
for help. Mostly they came afoot, sometimes 
holding on to one another for mutual support. 
Perhaps one in five was borne bodily by an 
orderly. He might be hunched in the orderly's 
arms like a weary child, or he might be trav- 
eling upon the orderly's back, pack-fashion, 
with his arms gripped about the bearer's neck; 
and then, in such a case, the pair of them, 
with the white hollow face of the wounded 
man nodding above the sweated red face of 
the other, became a monstrosity with two 
heads and one pair of legs. 

Here, advancing toward us with the gait 
of a doddering grandsire, would be a boy 
in his teens, bent double and clutching his 
[S51] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



middle with both hands. Here would be a 
man whose hand had been smashed, and from 
beyond the rude swathings of cotton his fingers 
protruded stiffly and were so congested and 
swollen they looked like fat red plantains. 
Here was a man whose feet were damaged. 
He had a crutch made of a spade handle. 
Next would be a man with a hole in his neck, 
and the bandages had pulled away from about 
his throat, showing the raw inflamed hole. 
In this parade I saw a French infantryman aided 
along by a captured Zouave on one side and 
on the other by a German sentry who swung 
his loaded carbine in his free hand. Behind 
them I saw an awful nightmare of a man — 
a man whose face and bare cropped head 
and hands and shoes were all of a livid, poison- 
ous, green cast. A shell of some new and 
particularly devilish variety had burst near 
him and the fumes which it generated in 
bursting had dyed him green. Every man 
would have, tied about his neck or to one of 
his buttonholes, the German field-doctor's 
card telling of the nature of his hurt and the 
place where he had sustained it; and the uni- 
form of nearly every one would be discolored 
with dried blood, and where the coat gaped 
open you marked that the. harsh, white cam- 
bric lining was made harsher still by stiff, 
brownish-red streakings. 

In at the door of the improvised hospital 
filed the parade, and the wounded men dropped 

[352] 



THE RED GLUTTON 



on the floor or else were lowered upon chairs 
and tables and cots — anywhere that there 
was space for them to huddle up or stretch 
out. And then the overworked surgeons, 
French and German, and the German nursing 
sisters and certain of the orderlies would fall 
to. There was no time for the finer, daintier 
proceedings that might have spared the suf- 
ferers some measure of their agony. It was 
cut away the old bandage, pull off the filthy 
cotton, dab with antiseptics what was beneath, 
pour iodine or diluted acid upon the bare and 
shrinking tissues, perhaps do that with the 
knife or probe which must be done where in- 
cipient mortification had set in, clap on fresh 
cotton, wind a strip of cloth over it, pin it in 
place and send this man away to be fed — 
providing he could eat; then turn to the next 
poor wretch. The first man was out of that 
place almost before the last man was in; that 
was how fast the work went forward. 

One special horror was spared: The patients 
made no outcry. They gritted their teeth 
and writhed where they lay, but none shrieked 
out. Indeed, neither here nor at any of the 
other places where I saw wounded men did 
we hear that chorus of moans and shrieks 
with which fiction always has invested such 
scenes. Those newly struck seemed stunned 
into silence; those who had had time to recover 
from the first shock of being struck appeared 
buoyed and sustained by a stoic quality which 

[353] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



lifted them, mute and calm, above the call 
of tortured nerves and torn flesh. Those who 
were delirious might call out; those who were 
conscious locked their lips and were steadfast. 
In all our experience I came upon just two men 
in their senses who gave way at all. One was 
a boy of nineteen or twenty, in a field hospital 
near Rheims, whose kneecap had been smashed. 
He sat up on his bed, rocking his body and 
whimpering fretfully like an infant. He had 
been doing that for days, a nurse told us, 
but whether he whimpered because of his 
suffering or at the thought of going through 
life with a stiffened leg she did not know. The 
other was here at Maubeuge. I helped hold 
his right arm steady while a surgeon took 
the bandages off his hand. When the wrap- 
ping came away a shattered finger came with 
it — it had rotted off, if you care to know that 
detail — and at the sight the victim uttered 
growling, rasping, animal-like sounds. Even 
so, I think it was the thing he saw more than 
the pain of it that overcame him; the pain 
he could have borne. He had been bearing 
it for days. 

I particularly remember one other man 
who was brought in off this first train. He 
was a young giant. For certain the old father 
of Frederick the Great would have had him 
in his regiment of Grenadier Guards. Well, 
for that matter, he was a grenadier in the 
employ of the same family now. He hobbled 
[354] 



THE RED GLUTTON 



in under his own motive power and leaned 
against the wall until the first flurry was over. 
Then, at a nod from one of the shirt-sleeved 
surgeons, he stretched himself upon a bare 
wooden table which had just been vacated and 
indicated that he wanted relief for his leg— 
which leg, I recall, was incased in a rude, 
splintlike arrangement of plaited straw. The 
surgeon took off the straw and the packing 
beneath it. The giant had a hole right through 
his knee, from side to side, and the flesh all 
about it was horribly swollen and purplish- 
black. So the surgeon soused the joint, wound 
and all, with iodine; the youth meanwhile 
staring blandly up at the ceiling with his 
arms crossed on his wide breast. I stood 
right by him, looking into his face, and he 
didn't so much as bat an eyelid. But he didn't 
offer to get up when the surgeon was done 
with treating him. He turned laboriously 
over on his face, pulling his shirt free from his 
body as he did so, and then we saw that he 
had a long, infected gash from a glancing 
bullet across the small of his back. He had 
been lying on one angry wound while the other 
was redressed. You marveled, not that he 
had endured it without blenching, but that 
he had endured it at all. 

The train stayed with us perhaps half an 

hour, and in that half hour at least a hundred 

men must have had treatment of sorts. A signal 

sounded and the orderlies lifted up the few 

[355] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



wasted specters who still remained and toted 
them out. Almost the last man to be borne 
away was injured in both legs; an orderly 
carried him in his arms. Seeing the need of 
haste the orderly sought to heave his burden 
aboard the nearest car. The men in that car 
protested; already their space was overcrowded. 
So the patient orderly staggered down the 
train until he found the crippled soldier's 
rightful place and thrust him into the straw 
just as the wheels began to turn. As the 
cars, gathering speed, rolled by us we could 
see that nearly all the travelers were feeding 
themselves from pannikins of the bull-meat 
stew. Wrappings on their hands and some- 
times about their faces made them doubly 
awkward, and the hot tallowy mess spilt in 
spattering streams upon them and upon the 
straw under them. 

They were on their way. At the end of 
another twenty-four hour stretch they might 
have traveled fifty or sixty or even seventy 
miles. The place they left behind them was 
in worse case than before. Grease spattered 
the earth; the floor of the buffet room was 
ankle deep, literally, in discarded bandages 
and blood-stiffened cotton; and the nurses 
and the doctors and the helpers dropped down 
in the midst of it all to snatch a few precious 
minutes of rest before the next creaking caravan 
of misery arrived. There was no need to tell 
them of its coming; they knew. All through 
[356] 



THE RED GLUTTON 



that afternoon and night, and through the 
next day and night, and through the half of 
the third day that we stayed on in Maubeuge, 
the trains came back. They came ten minutes 
apart, twenty minutes apart, an hour apart, 
but rarely more than an hour would elapse 
between trains. And this traffic in marred 
and mutilated humanity had been going on 
for four weeks and would go on for nobody 
knew how many weeks more. 

When the train had gone out of sight be- 
yond the first turn to the eastward I spoke 
to the head surgeon of the German con- 
tingent — a broad, bearded, middle-aged man 
who sat on a baggage truck while an orderly 
poured a mixture of water and antiseptics 
over his soiled hands. 

"A lot of those poor devils will die?" I 
suggested. 

"Less than three per cent of those who 
get back to the base hospitals will die," he 
said with a snap of his jaw, as though chal- 
lenging me to doubt the statement. "That 
is the wonder of this war — that so many are 
killed in the fighting and that so few die 
who get back out of it alive. These modern 
scientific bullets, these civilized bullets" — he 
laughed in self-derision at the use of the 
word — "they are cruel and yet they are mer- 
ciful too. If they do not kill you outright 
they have a little way, somehow, of not killing 
you at all." 

[357] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



"But the bayonet wounds and the saber 
wounds?" I said. "How about them?" 

"I have been here since the very first," 
he said; "since the day after our troops took 
this town, and God knows how many thousands 
of wounded men — Germans, Englishmen, 
Frenchmen, Turcos, some Belgians — have 
passed through my hands; but as yet I have 
to see a man who has been wounded by a saber 
or a lance. I saw one bayonet wound yester- 
day or the day before. The man had fallen 
on his own bayonet and driven it into his side. 
Shrapnel wounds? Yes. Wounds from frag- 
ments of bombs? Again, yes. Bullet wounds? 
I can't tell you how many of those I have 
seen, but surely many thousands. But no 
bayonet wounds. This is a war of hot lead, 
not of cold steel. I read of these bayonet 
charges, but I do not believe that many such 
stories are true." 

I didn't believe it either. 

The train which followed after the first, 
coming up out of France, furnished for us 
much the same sights the first one had fur- 
nished, and so, with some slight variations, 
did the third train and the fourth and all 
the rest of them. The station became a sty 
where before it had been a kennel; the flies 
multiplied; the stenches increased in volume 
and strength, if such were possible; the win- 
dows of the littered waiting room, with their 
cracked half panes, were like ribald eyes 
[3581 



THE RED GLUTTON 



winking at the living afflictions which con- 
tinually trailed past them; the floors looked 
as though there had been a snowstorm. 

A train came, whose occupants were nearly 
all wounded by shrapnel. Wounds of the 
head, the face and the neck abounded among 
these men — for the shells, exploding in the air 
above where they crouched in their trenches, 
had bespattered them with iron pebbles. Each 
individual picture of suffering recurred with 
such monotonous and regular frequency that 
after an hour or so it took something out of 
the common run — an especially vivid splash of 
daubed and crimson horror — to quicken our 
imaginations and make us fetch out our note 
books. I recall a young lieutenant of Uhlans 
who had been wounded in the breast by frag- 
ments of a grenade, which likewise had smashed 
in several of his ribs. He proudly fingered 
his newly acquired Iron Cross while the 
surgeon relaced his battered torso with strips 
of gauze. Afterward he asked me for a cigar, 
providing I had one to spare, saying he had 
not tasted tobacco for a week and was perishing 
for a smoke. We began to take note then how 
the wounded men watched us as we puffed 
at our cigars, and we realized they were dumbly 
envying us each mouthful of smoke. So we 
sent our chauffeur to the public market with 
orders to buy all the cigars he could find on 
sale there. He presently returned with the 
front and rear seats of the automobile piled 
[359] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



high with bundled sheaves of the brown weed 
— you can get an astonishingly vast number 
of those domestic French cigars for the equiva- 
lent of thirty dollars in American money — 
and we turned the whole cargo over to the 
head nurse on condition that, until the supply 
was exhausted, she give a cigar to every hurt 
soldier who might crave one, regardless of his 
nationality. She cried as she thanked us for 
the small charity. 

"We can feed them — yes," she said, "but 
we have nothing to give them to smoke, and 
it is very hard on them." 

A little later a train arrived which brought 
three carloads of French prisoners and one 
carload of English. Among the Frenchmen 
were many Alpine Rangers, so called — the 
first men we had seen of this wing of the 
service — and by reason of their dark blue 
uniforms and their flat blue caps they looked 
more like sailors than soldiers. At first we 
took them for sailors. There were thirty -four 
of the Englishmen, being all that were left 
of a company of the West Yorkshire Regiment 
of infantry. Confinement for days in a bare 
box car, with not even water to wash their 
faces and hands in, had not altogether robbed 
them of a certain trim alertness which seems 
to belong to the British fighting man. Their 
puttees were snugly reefed about their shanks 
and their khaki tunics buttoned up to their 
throats. 

[360] 



THE RED GLUTTON 



We talked with them. They wanted to 
know if they had reached Germany yet, 
and when we told them that they were not 
out of France and had all of Belgium still 
to traverse, they groaned their dismay in 
chorus. 

"We've 'ad a very 'ard time of it, sir," 
said a spokesman, who wore sergeant's stripes 
on his sleeves and who told us he came from 
Sheffield. "Seventeen 'ours we were in the 
trench, under fire all the time, with water up 
to our middles and nothing to eat. We were 
'olding the center and when the Frenchies fell 
back they didn't give our chaps no warning, 
and pretty soon the Dutchmen they 'ad us 
flanked both sides and we 'ad to quit. But 
we didn't quit until we'd lost all but one of 
our officers and a good 'alf of our men." 
"Where was this?" one of us asked. 
"Don't know, sir," he said. "It's a blooming 
funny war. You never knows the name of the 
place where you're fighting at, unless you 
'ears it by chance." 
Then he added: 

"Could you tell us, sir, Ws the war going? 
Are we giving the Germans a proper 'iding 
all along the line?" 

We inquired regarding their treatment. They 
didn't particularly fancy the food — narsty 
slop, the sergeant called it — although it was 
reasonably plentiful; and, being true English- 
men, they sorely missed their tea. Then, too, 
[361] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



on the night before their overcoats had been 
taken from them and no explanations vouch- 
safed. 

"We could 'ave done with them," said the 
speaker bitterly; "pretty cold it was in this 
'ere car. And what with winter coming on 
and everything I call it a bit thick to be taking 
our overcoats off of us." 

We went and asked a German officer who had 
the convoy in charge the reason for this, and 
he said the overcoats of all the uninjured 
men, soldiers as well as prisoners, had been 
confiscated to furnish coverings for such of 
the wounded as lacked blankets. Still, I 
observed that the guards for the train had 
their overcoats. So I do not vouch for the 
accuracy of his explanation. 

It was getting late in the afternoon and 
the fifth train to pull in from the south since 
our advent on the spot — or possibly it was 
the sixth — had just halted when, from the 
opposite direction, a troop-train, long and 
heavy, panted into sight and stopped on the 
far track while the men aboard it got an early 
supper of hot victuals. We crossed over to 
have a look at the new arrivals. 

It was a long train, drawn by one loco- 
motive and shoved by another, and it included 
in its length a string of flat cars upon which 
were lashed many field pieces, and com- 
mandeered automobiles, and even some family 
carriages, not to mention baggage wagons and 
[362] 



THE RED GLUTTON 



cook wagons and supply wagons. For a won- 
der, the coaches in which the troops rode were 
new, smart coaches, seemingly just out of the 
builders' hands. They were mainly first and 
second class coaches, varnished outside and 
equipped with upholstered compartments where 
the troopers took their luxurious ease. Fol- 
lowing the German fashion, the soldiers had 
decorated each car with field flowers and sheaves 
of wheat and boughs of trees, and even with long 
paper streamers of red and white and black. 
Also, the artists and wags of the detachment 
had been busy with colored chalks. There was 
displayed on one car a lively crayon picture 
of a very fierce, two-tailed Bavarian lion 
eating up his enemies — a nation at a bite. 
Another car bore a menu: 

Russian caviar 
Servian rice meat English roast beef 

Belgian ragout French pastry 

Upon this same car was lettered a bit of 
crude verse, which, as we had come to know, 
was a favorite with the German private. By 
my poor translation it ran somewhat as fol- 
lows: 

For the Slav, a kick we have, 

And for the Jap a slap; 
The Briton too — we'll beat him blue, 

And knock the Frenchman flat. 
[3631 



PATHS OF GLORY 



Altogether the train had quite the holiday- 
ing air about it and the men who traveled 
on it had the same spirit too. They were 
Bavarians — all new troops, and nearly all 
young fellows. Their accouterments were 
bright and their uniforms almost unsoiled, 
and I saw that each man carried in his right 
boot top the long, ugly-looking dirk-knife that 
the Bavarian foot-soldier fancies. The Ger- 
mans always showed heat when they found 
a big service clasp-knife hung about a cap- 
tured Englishman's neck on a lanyard, calling 
it a barbarous weapon because of the length 
of the blade and long sharp bradawl which 
folded into a slot at the back of the handle; 
but an equally grim bit of cutlery in a Ba- 
varian's bootleg seemed to them an entirely 
proper tool for a soldier to be carrying. 

The troops — there must have been a full 
battalion of them — piled off the coaches to 
exercise their legs. They skylarked about 
on the earth, and sang and danced, and were 
too full of coltish spirits to eat the rations 
that had been brought from the kitchen for 
their consumption. Seeing our cameras, a 
lieutenant who spoke English came up to invite 
us to make a photograph of him and his men, 
with their bedecked car for a background. He 
had been ill, he said, since the outbreak of 
hostilities, which explained why he was just 
now getting his first taste of active campaigning 
service. 

[364] 



THE RED GLUTTON 



"Wait," he said vaingloriously, "just wait 
until we get at the damned British. Some 
one else may have the Frenchmen — we want 
to get our hands on the Englishmen. Do you 
know what my men say? They say they are 
glad for once in their lives to enjoy a fight 
where the policemen won't interfere and spoil 
the sport. That's the Bavarian for you — the 
Prussian is best at drill, but the Bavarian is 
the best fighter in the whole world. Only let 
us see the enemy — that is all we ask! 

"I say, what news have you from the front? 
All goes well, eh? As for me I only hope there 
will be some of the enemy left for us to kill. 
It is a glorious thing — this going to war! 
I think we shall get there very soon, where the 
fighting is. I can hardly wait for it." And 
with that he hopped up on the steps of the 
nearest car and posed for his picture. 

Having just come from the place whither 
he was so eagerly repairing I might have told 
him a few things. I might for example have 
told him what the captain of a German bat- 
tery in front of La Fere had said, and that 
was this: 

"I have been on this one spot for nearly 
three weeks now, serving my guns by day and 
by night. I have lost nearly half of my original 
force of men and two of my lieutenants. We 
shoot over those tree tops yonder in accordance 
with directions for range and distance which 
come from somewhere else over field tele- 
[365] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



phone, but we never see the men at whom we 
are firing. They fire back without seeing us, 
and sometimes their shells fall short or go 
beyond us, and sometimes they fall among 
us and kill and wound a few of us. Thus it 
goes on day after day. I have not with my 
own eyes seen a Frenchman or an Englishman 
unless he was a prisoner. It is not so much 
pleasure — fighting like this." 

I might have told the young Bavarian 
lieutenant of other places where I had been — 
places where the dead lay for days unburied. 
I might have told him there was nothing 
particularly pretty or particularly edifying 
about the process of being killed. Death, I 
take it, is never a very tidy proceeding; but 
in battle it acquires an added unkemptness. 
Men suddenly and sorely stricken have a way 
of shrinking up inside their clothes; unless they 
die on the instant they have a way of tearing 
their coats open and gripping with their hands 
at their vitals, as though to hold the life in; 
they have a way of sprawling their legs in 
grotesque postures; they have a way of putting 
their arms up before their faces as though at 
the very last they would shut out a dreadful 
vision. Those contorted, twisted arms with 
the elbows up, those spraddled stark legs, and, 
most of all, those white dots of shirts — those 
I had learned to associate in my own mind 
with the accomplished fact of mortality upon 
the field. 

[3661 



THE RED GLUTTON 



I might have told him of sundry field hos- 
pitals which I had lately visited. I could re- 
create in my memory, as I shall be able to re- 
create it as long as I live and have my senses, 
a certain room in a certain schoolhouse in a 
French town where seven men wriggled and 
fqught in the unspeakable torments of lockjaw; 
and another room filled to capacity with men 
who had been borne there because there was 
nothing humanly to be done for them, and who 
now lay very quietly, their suetty-gray faces 
laced with tiny red stripes of fever, and their 
paling eyes staring up at nothing at all; and 
still another room given over entirely to 
stumps of men, who lacked each a leg or an 
arm, or a leg and an arm, or both legs or 
both arms; and still a fourth room wherein 
were men — and boys too — all blinded, all 
learning to grope about in the everlasting black 
night which would be their portion through 
all their days. Indeed for an immediate 
illustration of the products of the business 
toward which he was hastening I might have 
taken him by the arm and led him across two 
sets of tracks and shown him men in the prime 
of life who were hatcheled like flax, and mauled 
like blocks, and riddled like sieves, and macer- 
ated out of the living image of their Maker. 

But I did none of these things. He had a 

picture of something uplifting and splendid 

before his eyes. He wanted to fight, or he 

thought he did, which came to the same thing. 

[367] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



So what I did was to take down his name and 
promise to send him a completed copy of his 
picture in the care of his regiment and brigade; 
and the last I saw of him he was half out of a 
car window waving good-by to us and wishing 
us auf wiedersehen as he was borne away to 
his ordained place. 

As we rode back through the town of Mau- 
beuge in the dusk, the company which had 
sung Strassburg in the Franco-German beer 
shop at the prow of the corner where the three 
streets met were just marching away. I 
thought I caught, in the weaving gray line that 
flowed along like quicksilver, a glimpse of the 
boy who was so glad because he was about 
to have some luck. 

In two days fourteen thousand wounded men 
came back through Maubeuge, and possibly 
ten times that many new troops, belonging to 
the first October draft of a million, passed 
down the line. In that week fifty thousand 
wounded men returned from the German right 
wing alone. 

He's a busy Red Glutton. There seems to 
be no satisfying his greed. 



[ 368J 



CHAPTER XV 
BELGIUM— THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 



I HAVE told you already, how on the first 
battlefield of any consequence that was 
visited by our party I picked up, from 
where it lay in the track of the Allies' 
retreat, a child's rag doll. It was a grotesque 
thing of print cloth, with sawdust insides. I 
found it at a place where two roads met. 
Presumably some Belgian child, fleeing with 
her parents before the German advance, 
dropped it there, and later a wagon or perhaps 
a cannon came along and ran over it. The 
heavy wheel had mashed the head of it flat. 

In impressions which I wrote when the mem- 
ory of the incident was vivid in my mind, I 
said that, to me, this shabby little rag doll 
typified Belgium. Since then I have seen 
many sights. Some were dramatic and some 
were pathetic, and nearly all were stirring; 
but I still recall quite clearly the little picture 
of the forks of the Belgian road, with a back- 
[369] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



ground of trampled fields and sacked houses, 
and just at my feet the doll, with its head 
crushed in and the sawdust spilled out in 
the rut the ongoing army had made. And 
always now, when I think of this, I find myself 
thinking of Belgium. 

They have called her the cockpit of Europe: 
She is too. In wars that were neither of her 
making nor her choosing she has borne the 
hardest blows — a poor little buffer state thrust 
in between great and truculent neighbors. To 
strike at one another they must strike Belgium. 
By the accident of geography and the caprice 
of boundary lines she has always been the 
anvil for their hammers. Jemmapes and 
Waterloo, to cite two especially conspicuous 
examples among great Continental battles, 
were fought on her soil. Indeed, there is scarce- 
ly an inch of her for the possession of which 
men of breeds not her own — Austrians and 
Spaniards, Hanoverians and Hollanders, Eng- 
lishmen and Prussians, Saxons and Frenchmen 
— have not contended. These others won the 
victories or lost them, kept the spoils or gave 
them up; she wore the scars of the grudges 
when the grudges were settled. So there is a 
reason for calling her the cockpit of the na- 
tions; but, as I said just now, I shall think of 
her as Europe's rag doll — a thing to be clouted 
and kicked about; to be crushed under the 
hoofs and the heels; to be bled and despoiled 
and ravished. 

[3701 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

Thinking of her so, I do not mean by this 
comparison to reflect in any wise on the 
courage of her people. It will be a long time 
before the rest of the world forgets the resist- 
ance her soldiers made against overbrimming 
odds, or the fortitude with which the families 
of those soldiers faced a condition too la- 
mentable for description. 

Unsolicited, so competent an authority as 
Julius Caesar once gave the Belgians a testi- 
monial for their courage. If I recall the 
commentaries aright, he said they were the 
most valorous of all the tribes of Gaul. Those 
who come afterward to set down the tale 
and tally of the Great War will record that 
through the centuries the Belgians retained 
their ancient valor. 

First and last, I had rather exceptional op- 
portunities for viewing the travail of Belgium. 
I was in Brussels before it surrendered and 
after it surrendered. I was in Lou vain when 
the Germans entered it and I was there again 
after the Germans had wrecked it. I trailed 
the original army of invasion from Brussels 
southward to the French border, starting at 
the tail of the column and reaching the head 
of it before, with my companions, I was ar- 
rested and returned by another route across 
Belgium to German soil. 

Within three weeks thereafter I started on 
a ten-day tour which carried me through 
Liege, Namur, Huy, Dinant and Chimay, and 
[371] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



brought me back by Mons, Brussels, Louvain 
and Tirlemont, with a side trip to the trenches 
before Antwerp — roughly, a kite-shaped jour- 
ney which comprehended practically all the 
scope of active operations among the contend- 
ing armies prior to the time when the struggle 
for western Flanders began. Finally, just after 
Antwerp fell, I skirted the northern frontiers 
of Belgium and watched the refugees pouring 
across the borders into Holland. I was four 
times in Liege and three times in Brussels, 
and any number of times I crossed and recrossed 
my own earlier trails. I traveled afoot; in a 
railroad train, with other prisoners; in a taxi- 
cab, which we lost; in a butcher's cart, which 
we gave away; in an open carriage, which 
deserted us; and in an automobile, which 
vanished. 

I saw how the populace behaved while their 
little army was yet intact, offering gallant re- 
sistance to the Germans; I saw how they be- 
haved when the German wedge split that army 
into broken fragments and the Germans were 
among them, holding dominion with the 
bayonet and the bullet; and finally, six weeks 
later, I saw how they behaved when sub- 
stantially all their country, excluding a strip 
of seaboard, had been reduced to the state 
of a conquered fief held and ruled by force of 
arms. 

By turns I saw them determined, desperate, 
despairing, half rebellious, half subdued; re- 
[3721 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

signed with the resignation of sheer helpless- 
ness, which I take it is a different thing from 
the resignation of sheer hopelessness. It is 
no very pleasant sight to see a country flayed 
and quartered like a bloody carcass in a meat 
shop; but an even less pleasant thing than 
that is to see a country's heart broken. And 
Belgium to-day is a country with a broken 
heart. 

These lines were written with intent to be 
printed early in January. By that time Christ- 
mas was over and done with. On the other side 
of the Atlantic Ocean, in lieu of the Christmas 
carols, the cannon had rung its brazen Christ- 
mas message across the trenches, making mock- 
ery of the words: "On earth peace, good will 
toward men." On our side of the ocean the 
fine spirit of charity and graciousness which 
comes to most of us at Christmastime and keeps 
Christmas from becoming a thoroughly com- 
mercialized institution had begun to abate 
somewhat of its fervor. 

To ourselves we were saying, many of us: 
"We have done enough for the poor, whom 
we have with us always." But not always 
do we have with us a land famous for its 
fecundity that is now at grips with famine; a 
land that once was light-hearted, but where 
now you never hear anyone laugh aloud; a land 
that is half a waste and half a captive prov- 
ince; a land that cannot find bread to feed its 
hungry mouths, yet is called on to pay a tribute 
[373] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



heavy enough to bankrupt it even in normal 
times; a land whose best manhood is dead 
on the battleground or rusting in military pris- 
ons; whose women and children by the count- 
less thousands are either homeless wanderers 
thrust forth on the bounty of strangers in 
strange places, or else are helpless, hungry 
paupers sitting with idle hands in their deso- 
lated homes — and that land is Belgium. 

Having been an eyewitness to the causes 
that begot this condition and to the condition 
itself, I feel it my duty to tell the story as I 
know it. I am trying to tell it dispassionately, 
without prejudice for any side and without 
hysteria. I concede the same to be a difficult 
undertaking. 

Some space back I wrote that I had been 
able to find in Belgium no direct proof of the 
mutilations, the torturings and other barbarities 
which were charged against the Germans by 
the Belgians. Though fully a dozen seasoned 
journalists, both English and American, have 
agreed with me, saying that their experiences 
in this regard had been the same as mine; and 
though I said in the same breath that I could 
not find in Germany any direct evidence of 
the brutalities charged against the Belgians 
by the Germans, the prior statement was ac- 
cepted by some persons as proof that my 
sympathy for the Belgians had been chilled 
through association with the Germans. No 
such thing. But what I desire now is the op- 
[374] 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

portunity to say this: In the face of the pres- 
ent plight of this little country we need not 
look for individual atrocities. Belgium herself 
is the capsheaf atrocity of the war. No matter 
what our nationality, our race or our senti- 
ments may be, none of us can get away from 
that. 

Going south into France from the German 
border city of Aix-la-Chapelle, our auto- 
mobile carried us down the Meuse. On the 
eastern bank, which mainly we followed during 
the first six hours of riding, there were craggy 
cliffs, covered with forests, which at intervals 
were cleft by deep ravines, where small farms 
clung to the sides of the steep hills. On the 
opposite shore cultivated lands extended from 
the limit of one's vision down almost to the 
water. There they met a continuous chain 
of manufacturing plants, now all idle, which 
stretched along the river shore from end to 
end of the valley. Culm and flume and stack 
and kiln succeeded one another unendingly, but 
no smoke issued from any chimney; and we 
noted that already weeds were springing up in 
the quarry yards and about the mouths of the 
coal pits and the doorways of the empty fac- 
tories. 

Considering that the Germans had to fight 
their way along the Meuse, driving back the 
French and Belgians before they trusted their 
columns to enter the narrow defiles, there was 
in the physical aspect of things no great amount 
[375] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



of damage visible. Stagnation, though, lay 
like a blight on what had been one of the 
busiest and most productive industrial districts 
in all of Europe. Except that trains ran by 
endlessly, bearing wounded men north, and 
fresh troops and fresh supplies south, the river 
shore was empty and silent. 

In twenty miles of running we passed just 
two groups of busy men. At one place a gang 
of German soldiers were strengthening the tem- 
porary supports of a railroad bridge which 
had been blown up by the retiring forces and 
immediately repaired by the invaders. In 
another place a company of reserves were re- 
charging cases of artillery shells which had been 
sent back from the front in carload lots. There 
were horses here — a whole troop of draft 
horses which had been worn out in that re- 
lentless, heartbreaking labor into which war 
sooner or later resolves itself. The drove had 
been shipped back this far to be rested and 
cured up, or to be shot in the event that they 
were past mending. 

I had seen perhaps a hundred thousand 
head of horses, drawing cannon and wagons, 
and serving as mounts for officers in the first 
drive of the Germans toward Paris, and had 
marveled at the uniformly prime condition 
of the teams. Presumably these sorry crow- 
baits, which drooped and limped about the 
barren railroad yards at the back of the siding 
where the shell loaders squatted, had been 
[376J 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

whole-skinned and sound of wind and joint 
in early August. 

Two months of service had turned them into 
gaunt wrecks. Their ribs stuck through their 
hollow sides. Their hoofs were broken; their 
hocks were swelled enormously; and, worst of 
all, there were great raw wounds on their 
shoulders and backs, where the collars and 
saddles had worn through hide and flesh to 
the bones. From that time on, the numbers 
of mistreated, worn-out horses we encountered 
in transit back from the front increased stead- 
ily. Finally we ceased to notice them at all. 

I should explain that the description I have 
given of the prevalent idleness along the 
Meuse applied to the towns and to the scat- 
tered workingmen's villages that flanked all 
or nearly all the outlying and comparatively 
isolated factories. In the fields and the truck 
patches the farming folks — women and old 
men usually, with here and there children — 
bestirred themselves to get the moldered and 
mildewed remnants of their summer-ripened 
crops under cover before the hard frost came. 

Invariably we found this state of affairs to 
exist wherever we went in the districts of 
France and of Belgium that had been fought 
over and which were now occupied by the 
Germans. Woodlands and cleared places, 
where engagements had taken place, would, 
within a month or six weeks thereafter, show 
astonishingly few traces of the violence and 
[377] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



death that had violated the peace of the 
countryside. New grass would be growing 
in the wheel ruts of the guns and on the sides 
of the trenches in which infantry had screened 
itself. As though they took pattern by the 
example of Nature, the peasants would be 
afield, gathering what remained of their har- 
vests — even plowing and harrowing the ground 
for new sowing. On the very edge of the 
battle front we saw them so engaged, seemingly 
paying less heed to the danger of chance shell- 
fire than did the soldiers who passed and repassed 
where they toiled. 

In the towns almost always the situation 
was different. The people who lived in those 
towns seemed like so many victims of a uni- 
versal torpor. They had lost even their sense 
of inborn curiosity regarding the passing stran- 
ger. Probably from force of habit, the shop- 
keepers stayed behind their counters; but be- 
tween them and the few customers who came 
there was little of the vivacious chatter one 
has learned to associate with dealings among 
the dwellers in most Continental communities. 

We passed through village after village and 
town after town, to find in each the same 
picture — men and women in mute clusters 
about the doorways and in the little squares, 
who barely turned their heads as the auto- 
mobile flashed by. Once in a while we caught 
the sound of a brisker tread on the cobbled 
street; but when we looked, nine times in ten 
[378] 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

we saw that the walker was a soldier of the 
German garrison quartered there to keep the 
population quiet and to help hold the line of 
communication. 

I think, though, this cankered apathy has its 
merciful compensations. After the first shock 
and panic of war there appears to descend on 
all who have a share in it, whether active or 
passive, a kind of numbed indifference as to 
danger; a kind of callousness as to conse- 
quences, which I find it difficult to define in 
words, but which, nevertheless, impresses itself 
on the observer's mind as a definite and tangible 
fact. The soldier gets it, and it enables him 
to endure his own discomforts and sufferings, 
and the discomforts and sufferings of his com- 
rades, without visible mental strain. The 
civic populace get it, and, as soon as they have 
been readjusted to the altered conditions 
forced on them by the presence of war, they 
become merely sluggish, dulled spectators of 
the great and moving events going on about 
them. The nurses and the surgeons get it, 
or else they would go mad from the horrors 
that surround them. The wounded get it, 
and cease from complaint and lamenting. 

It is as though all the nerve ends in every 
human body were burnt blunt in the first hot 
gush of war. Even the casual eyewitness gets 
it. We got it ourselves; and not until we had 
quit the zone of hostilities did we shake it off. 
Indeed, we did not try. It made for subsequent 
[379] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



sanity to carry for the time a drugged and 
stupefied imagination. 

Barring only Huy, where there had been some 
sharp street fighting, as attested by shelled 
buildings and sandbag barricades yet resting 
on housetops and in window sills, we encoun- 
tered in the first stage of our journey no con- 
siderable evidences of havoc until late in the 
afternoon, when we reached Dinant. I do 
not understand why the contemporary chroni- 
cles of events did not give more space to Dinant 
at the time of its destruction, and why they 
have not given it more space subsequently. 

I presume the reason lies in the fact that the 
same terrible week which included the burning 
of Louvain included also the burning of 
Dinant; and in the world-wide cry of protesta- 
tion and distress which arose with the smoke 
of the greater calamity the smaller voice of 
grief for little ruined Dinant was almost lost. 
Yet, area considered, no place in Belgium that 
I have visited — and this does not exclude 
Louvain — suffered such wholesale demolition 
as Dinant. 

Before war began, the town had something 
less than eight thousand inhabitants. When I 
got there it had less than four thousand, by 
the best available estimates. Of those four 
thousand more than twelve hundred were then 
without food from day to day except such as 
the Germans gave them. There were almost 
no able-bodied male adults left. Some had 
[380] 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 



fled, some were behind bars as prisoners of the 
Germans, and a great many were dead. Esti- 
mates of the number of male inhabitants who 
had been killed by the graycoats for offenses 
against the inflexible code set up by the 
Germans in eastern Belgium varied. A cau- 
tious native whispered that nine hundred 
of his fellow townsmen were "up there"— by 
that meaning the trenches on the hills back 
of the town. A German oflicer, newly arrived 
on the spot and apparently sincere in his ef- 
forts to alleviate the misery of the survivors, 
told us that, judging by what data he had been 
able to gather, between four and six hundred 
men and youths of Dinant had fallen in the 
house-to-house conflicts between Germans and 
civilians, or in the wholesale executions which 
followed the subjugation of the place and the 
capture of such ununiformed belligerents as 
were left. 

In this instance subjugation meant annihila- 
tion. The lower part of the town, where the 
well-to-do classes lived, was almost unscathed. 
Casual shell-fire in the two engagements with 
the French that preceded the taking of Dinant 
had smashed some cornices and shattered 
some windows, but nothing worse befell. The 
lower half, made up mainly of the little plaster- 
and-stone houses of working people, was gone, 
extinguished, obliterated. It lay in scorched 
and crumbled waste; and in it, as we rode 
through, I saw, excluding soldiers, just two 
[3811 



PATHS OF GLORY 



living creatures. Two children, both little 
girls, were playing at housekeeping on some 
stone steps under a doorway where there was 
no door, using bits of wreckage for furniture. 
We stopped a moment to watch them. They 
had small china dolls. 

The river, flowing placidly along between 
the artificial boundaries of its stone quays, 
and the strange formation of cliffs, rising at 
the back to the height of hundreds of feet, 
were as they had been. Soldiers paddled on 
the water in skiffs and thousands of ravens 
nickered about the pinnacles of the rocks, but 
between river and cliff there was nothing but 
ruination — the graveyard of the homes of 
three thousand people. 

Yes, it was the graveyard not alone of their 
homes but of their prosperity and their hopes 
and their ambitions and their aspirations — the 
graveyard of everything human beings count 
worth having. This was worse than Herve 
or Battice or Vise, or any of the leveled towns 
we had seen. Taken on the basis of compara- 
tive size, it was worse even than Louvain, as 
we discovered later. It was worse than any- 
thing I ever saw — worse than anything I ever 
shall see, I think. 

These hollow shells about us were like the 
picked cadavers of houses. Ends of burnt and 
broken rafters stood up like ribs. Empty 
window openings stared at us like the eye 
sockets in skulls. It was not a town upon 
[382] 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

which we looked, but the dead and rotting 
bones of a town. 

Just over the ragged line that marked the 
lowermost limits of the destructive fury of 
the conquerors, and inside the section which 
remained intact, we traversed a narrow street 
called — most appropriately, I thought — the 
Street of Paul the Penitent, and passed a little 
house on the shutters of which was written, 
in chalked German script, these words: "A 
Grossmutter ' ' — grandmother — " ninety-six years 
old lives here. Don't disturb her." Other 
houses along here bore the familiar line, written 
by German soldiers who had been billeted in 
them: "Good people. Leave them alone!" 

The people who enjoyed the protection of 
these public testimonials were visible, a few 
of them. They were nearly all women and 
children. They stood in their shallow door- 
ways as our automobile went by bearing four 
Americans, two German officers and the orderly 
of one of the officers — for we had picked up 
a couple of chance passengers in Huy — and 
a German chauffeur. As we interpreted then 
looks, they had no hate for the Germans. 
I take it the weight of their woe was so heavy 
on them that they had no room in their souls 
for anything else. 

Just beyond Dinant, at Anseremme, a 
beautiful little village at the mouth of a tiny 
river, where artists used to come to paint pic- 
tures and sick folks to breathe the tonic bal- 
[S83] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



sam of the hills, we got rooms for the night 
in a smart, clean tavern. Here was quartered 
a captain of cavalry, who found time — so brisk 
was he and so high-spirited — to welcome us to 
the best the place afforded, to help set the 
table for our belated supper, and to keep on 
terms of jovial yet punctilious amiability with 
the woman proprietor and her good-looking 
daughters; also, to require his troopers to 
pay the women, in salutes and spoken thanks, 
for every small office performed. 

The husband of the older woman and the 
husband of one of the daughters were then 
serving the Belgian colors, assuming that 
they had not been killed or caught; but be- 
tween them and this German captain a perfect 
understanding had been arrived at. When 
the head of the house fixed the prices she meant 
to charge us for our accommodations, he spoke 
up and suggested that the rate was scarcely 
high enough; and also, since her regular pa- 
trons had been driven away at the beginning 
of the war, he advised us that sizable tips on 
our leaving would probably be appreciated. 

Next morning we rose from a breakfast — 
the meat part of it having been furnished 
from the German commissary — to find twenty 
lancers exercising their horses in a lovely 
little natural arena, walled by hills, just below 
the small eminence whereon the house stood. 
It was like a scene from a Wild West exhibition 
at home, except that these German horsemen 
[384] 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

lacked the dash of our cowpunchers. Watching 
the show from a back garden, we stood waist 
deep in flowers, and the captain's orderly, 
when he came to tell us our automobile was 
ready, had a huge peony stuck in a buttonhole 
of his blouse. I caught a peep at another 
soldier, who was flirting with a personable 
Flemish scullery maid behind the protection 
of the kitchen wall. The proprietress and her 
daughters stood at the door to wave us good-by 
and to wish us, with apparent sincerity, a safe 
journey down into France, and a safe return. 

To drop from this cozy, peaceful place into 
the town of Dinant again was to drop from a 
small earthly paradise into a small earthly 
hell. Somewhere near the middle of the little 
perdition our cavalry captain pointed to a 
shell of a house. 

"A fortnight ago," he told us, "we found a 
French soldier in that house — or under it, 
rather. He had been there four weeks, hiding 
in the basement. He took some food with 
him or found some there; at any rate, he 
managed to live four weeks. He was blind, 
and nearly deaf, too, when we found out where 
he was and dug him out — but he is still alive." 

One of us said we should like to have a look 
at a man who had undergone such an entomb- 
ment. 

"No, you wouldn't," said the captain; "for 
he is no very pleasant sight. He is a slobbering 
idiot." 

[385] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



In the Grand Place, near the shell-riddled 
Church of Notre Dame — built by the Bishops 
in the thirteenth century, restored by the 
Belgian Government in the nineteenth, and 
destroyed by the German guns in the twentieth 
— a long queue of women wound past the 
doorway of a building where German non- 
commissioned officers handed out to each ap- 
plicant a big loaf of black soldier bread. 

"Oh, yes; we feed the poor devils," the 
German commandant, an elderly, scholarly 
looking man of the rank of major, said to us 
when he had come up to be introduced. "When 
our troops entered this town the men of the 
lower classes took up arms and fired at our 
soldiers; so the soldiers burned all their houses 
and shot all the men who came out of those 
houses. 

"All this occurred before I was sent here. 
Had I been the commander of the troops, I 
should have shot them without mercy. It is 
our law for war times, and these Belgian 
civilians must be taught that they cannot fire 
on German soldiers and not pay for it with 
their lives and their homes. With the women 
and children, however, the case is different. 
On my own responsibility I am feeding the 
destitute. Every day I give away to these 
people between twelve hundred and fifteen 
hundred loaves of bread; and I give to some 
who are particularly needy rations of tea and 
sugar and coffee and rice. Also, I sell to the 
[386] 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

butcher shops fresh and salt meat from our 
military stores at cost, requiring only that they, 
in turn, shall sell it at no more than a fair 
profit. So long as I am stationed here I shall 
do this, for I cannot let them starve before 
my eyes. I myself have children." 

It was like escaping from a pesthouse to 
cross the one bridge of Dinant that remained 
standing on its piers, and go winding down the 
lovely valley, overtaking and passing many 
German wagon trains, the stout, middle-aged 
soldier drivers of which drowsed on their 
seats; passing also one marching battalion of 
foot-reserves, who, their officers concurring, 
broke from the ranks to beg newspapers and 
cigars from us. On the mountain ash the 
bright red berries dangled in clumps like Christ- 
mas bells, and some of the leaves of the elm 
still clung to their boughs; so that the wide 
yellow road was dappled like a wild-cat's back 
with black splotches of shadow. Only when 
we curved through some village that had been 
the scene of a skirmish or a reprisal did the 
roofless shells and the toppled walls of the 
houses, standing gaunt and ugly in the sharp 
sunlight, make us realize that we were still 
in the war tracks. 

As nearly as we could tell from our brief 
scrutiny a great change had come over the 
dwellers in southern Belgium. In August 
they had been buoyant and confident of the 
ultimate outcome and very proud of the be- 
[387] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



havior of their little army. Even when the 
Germans burst through the frontier defenses 
and descended on them in innumerable swarms 
they were, for the most part, not daunted 
by those evidences of the invaders' numerical 
superiority and of their magnificent equip- 
ment. The more there were of the Germans 
the fewer of them there would be to come back 
when the Allies, over the French border, fell 
on them. This we conceived to be the mental 
attitude of the villagers and the peasants; 
but now they were different. The difference 
showed in all their outward aspects — in their 
gaits; in their drooped shoulders and half- 
averted faces; and, most of all, in their eyes. 
They had felt the weight of the armed hand, 
and they must have heard the boast, filtering 
down from the officers to the men, and from 
the men to the native populace, that, having 
taken their country, the Germans meant to 
keep it; that Belgium, ceasing to be Belgium, 
would henceforth be set down on the map 
as a part of Greater Prussia. 

Seeing them now, I began to understand 
how an enforced docility may reduce a whole 
people to the level of dazed, unresisting autom- 
atons. Yet a national spirit is harder to kill 
than a national boundary — so the students 
of these things say. A little flash of flaming 
hate from the dead ashes of things; a quick, 
darting glance of defiance; a hissed word from 
a seemingly subdued man or woman; a shrill, 
[388] 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

hostile whoop from a ragged youngster behind 
a hedge — things such as these showed us that 
the courage of the Belgians was not dead. 
It had been crushed to the ground, but it 
had not been torn up by the roots. The roots 
went down too far. The under dog had 
secret dreams of the day to come, when he 
should not be underneath, but on top. 

Even had there been no abandoned custom- 
houses to convince us of it, we should have 
known when we crossed from southern Bel- 
gium into northern France; for in France 
the proportion of houses that had suffered 
in punitive attacks was, compared with Bel- 
gium, as one to ten. Understand, I am 
speaking of houses that had been deliberately 
burned in punishment, and not of houses that 
stood in the way of the cannon and the rapid- 
fire guns, and so underwent partial or complete 
destruction as the result of an accidental yet 
inevitable and unavoidable process. Of these 
last France, to the square mile, could offer as 
lamentably large a showing as Belgium; but 
buildings that presented indubitable signs of 
having been fired with torches rather than 
with shells were few. 

Explaining this and applauding it, Germans 
of high rank said it presented direct and con- 
firmatory proof of their claim that sheer wanton 
reprisals were practically unknown in their 
system of warfare. Perhaps I can best set 
forth the German attitude in this regard by 
[389] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



quoting a general whom we interviewed on 
the subject: 

"We do not destroy for the pleasure it gives 
us. We destroy only when it is necessary. 
The French rural populace are more rational, 
more tractable and much less turbulent than 
the Belgians. To a much greater degree than 
the Belgians they have refrained from acts 
against our men that would call for severe 
retaliatory measures on our part. Consequently 
we have spared the houses and respected the 
property of the French noncombatants." 

Personally I had a theory of my own. So 
far as our observations went, the people living 
immediately on both sides of the line were 
an interrelated people, using the same speech 
and being much alike in temperament, man- 
ners and mode of conduct. I reached the 
private conclusion that, because of the chorus 
of protest that arose from all the neutral 
countries, and particularly from the United 
States, against the severities visited on Belgium 
in August and September, the word went forth 
to the German forces in the field that the 
scheme of punishment for offenders who vio- 
lated the field code should be somewhat softened 
and relaxed. However, that is merely a per- 
sonal theory. I may be absolutely wrong 
about it. The German general who interpreted 
the meaning of the situation may have been 
absolutely right about it. Certainly the phys- 
ical testimony was on his side. 
[390] 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

Also, it seemed to me, the psychology of the 
people — particularly of the womenfolk — in 
northern France was not that of their neigh- 
bors over the frontier. In a trade way the 
small shopkeepers here faced ruin; the Bel- 
gians already had been ruined. The French- 
women, whose sons and brothers and hus- 
bands and fathers were at the front, walked 
in the shadow of a great fear, as you might 
tell by a look into the face of any one of them. 
They were as peppercorns between the upper 
millstone and the nether, and the sound of the 
crunching was always in their ears, even though 
their turn to be ground up had not yet come. 

For the Belgian women, however, the worst 
that might befall had already happened to 
them; their souls could be wrung no more; 
they had no terror of the future, since the past 
had been so terrible and the present was a 
living desolation of all they counted worth 
while. You might say the Frenchwomen 
dreaded what the Belgians endured. The re- 
filled cup was at the lips of France; Belgium 
had drained it dry. 

Yet in both countries the women generally 
manifested the same steadfast and silent pa- 
tience. They said little; but their eyes asked 
questions. In the French towns we saw how 
bravely they strove to carry on their common 
affairs of life, which were so sadly shaken and 
distorted out of all normality by the earthquake 
of war. 

[391] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



For currency they had small French coins 
and strange German coins, and in some places 
futile-looking, little green-and-white slips, is- 
sued by the municipality in denominations 
of one franc and two francs and five francs, 
and redeemable in hard specie "three months 
after the declaration of peace." For wares 
to sell they had what remained of their de- 
pleted stocks; and for customers, their friends 
and neighbors, who looked forward to com- 
mercial ruin, which each day brought nearer 
to them all. Outwardly they were placid 
enough, but it was not the placidity of content. 
It bespoke rather a dumb, disciplined accept- 
ance by those who have had fatalism literally 
thrust on them as a doctrine to be practiced. 

Looking back on it I can recall just one 
woman I saw in France who maintained an 
unquenchable blitheness of spirit. She was 
the little woman who managed the small 
cafe in Maubeuge where we ate our meals. 
Perhaps her frugal French mind rejoiced that 
business remained so good, for many officers 
dined at her table and, by Continental stand- 
ards, paid her well and abundantly for what she 
fed them; but I think a better reason lay in the 
fact that she had within her an innate buoyancy 
which nothing — not even war — could daunt. 

She was one of those women who remain 
trig and chic though they be slovens by in- 
stinct. Her blouse was never clean, but she 
wore it with an air. Her skirt testified that 
[392] 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

skillets spit grease; but in it she somehow 
looked as trim as a trout fly. Even the hole 
in her stocking gave her piquancy; and she 
had wonderful black hair, which probably 
had not been combed properly for a month, 
and big, crackling black eyes. They told us 
that one day, a week or two before we came, 
she had been particularly cheerful — so cheerful 
that one of her patrons was moved to inquire 
the cause of it. 

"Oh," she said, "I am quite content with 
life to-day. I have word that my husband 
is a prisoner. Now he is out of danger and 
you Germans will have to feed him — and he 
is a great eater! If you starve him then I 
shall starve you." 

At breakfast Captain Mannesmann, who 
was with us, asked her in his best French for 
more butter. She paused in her quick, bird- 
like movements — for she was waitress, cook, 
cashier, manager and owner, all rolled into one 
— and cocking a saucy, unkempt head at him 
asked that the question be repeated. This 
time, in his efforts to be understood, he stretched 
his words out so that unwittingly his voice 
took on rather a whining tone. 

"Well, don't cry about it!" she snapped. 
"I'll see what I can do." 

Returning from the battle front our itin- 
erary included a long stretch of the great 
road that runs between Paris and Brussels, 
a road much favored formerly by auto tourists, 
[3931 



PATHS OF GLORY 



but now used almost altogether for military 
purposes. Considering that we traversed a 
corner of the stage of one of the greatest 
battles thus far waged — Mons — and that this 
battle had taken place but a few weeks before, 
there were remarkably few evidences remaining 
of it. 

With added force we remarked a condition 
that had given us material for wonderment 
in our earlier journeyings. Though a retreat- 
ing army and an advancing army, both enor- 
mous in size, had lately poured through the 
country, the houses, the farms and the towns 
were almost undamaged. 

Certain contrasts which took on a height- 
ened emphasis by reason of their brutal ab- 
ruptness, abounded all over Belgium. You 
passed at a step, as it were, from a district 
of complete and irreparable destruction to 
one wherein all things were orderly and or- 
dered, and much as they should be in peaceful 
times. Were it not for the stagnated towns 
and the depression that berode the people, 
one would hardly know these areas had lately 
been overrun by hostile soldiers and now 
groaned under enormous tithes. In isolated 
instances the depression had begun to lift. 
Certain breeds of the polyglot Flemish race 
have, it appears, an almost unkillable resilience 
of temper; but in a town a mile away all those 
whom we met would be like dead people who 
walked. 

[394] 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

Also, there were many graves. If we passed 
a long ridged mound of clay in a field, un- 
marked except by the piled-up clods, we 
knew that at this spot many had fought and 
many had fallen; but if, as occurred con- 
stantly, one separate mound or a little row of 
separate mounds was at the roadside, that 
probably meant a small skirmish. Such a 
grave almost always was marked by a little 
wooden cross, with a name penciled on it; 
and often the comrades of the dead man had 
hung his cap on the upright of the cross. If 
it were a French cap or a Belgian the weather 
would have worn it to a faded blue-and-red 
wisp of worsted. The German helmets stood 
the exposure better. They retained their 
shape. 

On a cross I saw one helmet with a bullet 
hole right through the center of it in front. 
Sometimes there would be flowers on the 
mound, faded garlands of field poppies and 
wreaths of withered wild vines; and by the 
presence of these we could tell that the dead 
man's mates had time and opportunity to 
accord him greater honor than usually is be- 
stowed on a soldier killed in an advance or 
during a retreat. 

Mons was reached soon, looking much as I 
imagine Mons must always have looked; and 
then, after a few stretching and weary leagues, 
Brussels — to my mind the prettiest and smart- 
est of the capital cities of Europe, not excluding 
[395] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



Paris. I first saw Brussels when it was as gay 
as carnival — that was in mid-August; and, 
though Liege had fallen and Namur was falling, 
and the German legions were eating up the 
miles as they hurried forward through the dust 
and smoke of their own making, Brussels still 
floated her flags, built her toy barricades, and 
wore a gay face to mask the panic clutching 
at her nerves. 

Getting back four days later I found her 
beginning to rally from the shock of the in- 
vasion. Her people, relieved to find that the 
enemy did not mean to mistreat noncombatants 
who obeyed his code of laws, were going about 
their affairs in such odd hours as they could 
spare from watching the unending gray freshet 
that roared and pounded through their streets. 
The flags were down and the counterfeit light- 
heartedness was gone; but essentially she was 
the same Brussels. 

Coming now, however, six weeks later, I 
found a city that had been transformed out 
of her own customary image by captivity and 
hunger and hard-curbed resentment. The 
pulse of her life seemed hardly to beat at all. 
She lay in a coma, flashing up feverishly some- 
times at false rumors of German repulses to 
the southward. 

Only the day before we arrived a wild story 

got abroad among the starvelings in the poorer 

quarters that the Russians had taken Berlin 

and had swept across Prussia and were now 

[396] 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

pushing forward, with an irresistible army, to 
relieve Brussels. So thousands of the deluded 
populace went to a bridge on the eastern out- 
skirts of the town to catch the first glimpse 
of the victorious oncoming Russians; and 
there they stayed until nightfall, watching 
and hoping and — what was more pitiable — 
believing. 

From what I saw of him I judged that the 
military governor of Brussels, Major Bayer, 
was not only a diplomat but a kindly and an 
engaging gentleman. Certainly he was wrest- 
ling most manfully, and I thought tactfully, 
with a difficult and a dangerous situation. 
For one thing, he was keeping his soldiers out 
of sight as much as possible without relaxing 
his grip on the community. He did this, he 
said, to reduce the chances of friction between 
his men and the people; for friction might mean 
a spark and a spark might mean a conflagra- 
tion, and that would mean another and greater 
Louvain. We could easily understand that 
small things might readily grow into great and 
serious troubles. Even the most docile-minded 
man would be apt to resent in the wearer of a 
hated uniform what he might excuse as over- 
officiousness or love of petty authority were 
the offender a policeman of his own nationality. 
Brooding over their own misfortunes had worn 
the nerves of these captives to the very quick. 

In any event, be the outcome of this war 
what it may, I do not believe the Belgians 
[3971 



PATHS OF GLORY 



can ever be molded, either by kindness or by 
sternness, into a tractable vassal race. German 
civilization I concede to be a magnificent 
thing — for a German; but it seems to press on 
an alien neck as a galling yoke. Belgium 
under Berlin rule would be, I am sure, Alsace 
and Lorraine all over again on a larger scale, 
and an unhappier one. She would never, in 
my humble opinion, be a star in the Prussian 
constellation, but always a raw sore in the 
Prussian side. 

In Major Bayer's office I saw the major 
stamp an order that turned over to the acting 
burgomaster ten thousand bags of flour for 
distribution among the more needy citizens. 
We were encouraged to believe that this was 
by way of a free gift from the German Govern- 
ment. It may have been made without pay- 
ment or promise of payment. In regard to 
that I cannot say positively; but this was 
the inference we drew from the statements of 
the German officers who took part in the pro- 
ceeding. As for the acting burgomaster, he 
stood through the scene silent and inscrutable, 
saying nothing at all. Possibly he did not 
understand; the conversation — or that part 
of it which concerned us — was carried on ex- 
clusively in English. His face, as he bowed 
to accept the certified warrant for the flour, 
gave us no hint of his mental processes. 

Major Bayer claimed a professional kinship 
with those of us who were newspaper men, 
[398] 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 



as he was the head of the Boy Scout movement 
in Germany and edited the official organ of 
the Boy Scouts. He had a squad of his scouts 
on messenger duty at his headquarters — 
smart, alert-looking youngsters. They seemed 
to me to be much more competent in their 
department than were the important-appearing 
German Secret Service agents who infested 
the building. The Germans may make first- 
rate spies — assuredly their system of espionage 
was well organized before the war broke out — 
but I do not think they are conspicuous suc- 
cesses as detectives: their methods are so 
delightfully translucent. 

Major Bayer had been one of the foremost 
German officers to set foot on Belgian soil 
after the severance of friendly relations be- 
tween the two countries. "I believe," he said, 
"that I heard the first shot fired in this war. 
It came from a clump of trees within half an 
hour after our advance guard crossed the 
boundary south of Aachen, and it wounded 
the leg of a captain who commanded a com- 
pany of scouts at the head of the column. 
Our skirmishers surrounded the woods and 
beat the thickets, and presently they brought 
forth the man who had fired the shot. He 
was sixty years old, and he was a civilian. 
Under the laws of war we shot him on the spot. 
So you see probably the first shot fired in this 
war was fired at us by a franc-tireur. By his 
act he had forfeited his life, but personally I 
[399] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



felt sorry for him; for I believe, like many of 
his fellow countrymen who afterward com- 
mitted such offenses, he was ignorant of the 
military indefensibility of his attack on us and 
did not realize what the consequences would be. 

"I am sure, though, that the severity with 
which we punished these offenses at the out- 
set was really merciful, for only by killing the 
civilians who fired on us, and by burning their 
houses, could we bring home to thousands of 
others the lesson that if they wished to fight 
us they must enlist in their own army and 
come against us in uniforms, as soldiers." 

Within the same hour we were introduced 
to Privy Councilor Otto von Falke, an Aus- 
trian by birth, but now, after long service 
in Cologne and Berlin, promoted to be Director 
of Industrial Arts for Prussia. He had been 
sent, he explained, by order of his Kaiser, to 
superintend the removal of historic works 
of art from endangered churches and other 
buildings, and turn them over to the curator 
of the Royal Belgian Gallery, at Brussels, for 
storage in the vaults of the museum until such 
time as peace had been restored and they 
might be returned with safety to their original 
positions. 

"So you see, gentlemen," said Professor von 
Falke, "the Germans are not despoiling Bel- 
gium of its wealth of pictures and statues. 
We are taking pains to preserve and perpetuate 
them. They belong to Belgium — not to us; 
[4001 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

and we have no desire to take them away. 
Certainly we are not vandals who would 
wantonly destroy the splendid things of art, 
as our enemies have claimed." 

He was plainly a sincere man and he was 
much in love with his work; that, too, was 
easy to see. Afterward, though, the thought 
came to us that, if Belgium was to become a 
German state by right of seizure and con- 
quest, he was saving these masterpieces of 
Vandyke and Rubens, not for Belgium, but 
for the greater glory of the Greater Empire. 

However, that was beside the mark. What 
at the moment seemed to us of more conse- 
quence even than rescuing holy pictures was 
that all about us were sundry hundreds of 
thousands of men, women and children who 
did not need pictures, but food. You had 
only to look at them in the streets to know 
that their bellies felt the grind of hunger. 
Famine knocked at half the doors in that city 
of Brussels, and we sat in the glittering cafe 
of the Palace Hotel and talked of pictures! 

We called on Minister Brand Whitlock, 
whom we had not seen — McCutcheon and I — 
since the Sunday afternoon a month and a 
half before when we two left his official resi- 
dence in a hired livery rig for a ride to Water- 
loo, which ride extended over a thousand miles, 
one way and another, and carried us into three 
of the warring countries. Mention of this call 
gives me opportunity to say in parenthesis, so 
[401 ] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



to speak, that if ever a man in acutely critical 
circumstances kept his head, and did a big 
job in a big way, and reflected credit at a 
thousand angles on himself and the country 
that had the honor to be served by him, that 
man was Brand Whitlock. To him, a citizen 
of another nation, the people of forlorn Brussels 
probably owe more than to any man of their 
own race. 

Grass was sprouting from between the 
cobbles of the streets in the populous resi- 
dential districts through which we passed on 
the way from the American Ministry to our 
next stopping place. Viewed at a short distance 
each vista of empty street had a wavy green 
beard on its face; and by this one might judge 
to what a low ebb the commerce and the 
pleasure of the city had fallen since its occu- 
pation. There was one small square where 
goats and geese might have been pastured. It 
looked as though weeks might have passed 
since wagon wheels had rolled over those 
stones; and the town folks whose houses 
fronted on the little square lounged in their 
doorways, with idle hands thrust into their 
pockets, regarding us with lackluster, indif- 
ferent eyes. It may have been fancy, but I 
thought nearly all of them looked griped of 
frame and that their faces seemed drawn. 
Seeing them so, you would have said that, 
with them, nothing mattered any more. 

We saw a good many people, though, who 
[402] 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 

were taking for the moment an acute and un- 
easy interest in their own affairs, at the big 
city prison, where we spent half an hour or 
so. Here, in a high-walled courtyard, we 
found upward of two hundred offenders against 
small civic regulations, serving sentences rang- 
ing in length from seven days to thirty. Per- 
haps one in three was a German soldier, and 
probably one in ten was a woman or a girl; the 
rest were male citizens of all ages, sizes and 
social grading, a few Congo negroes being 
mixed in. Most of the time they stayed in 
their cells, in solitary confinement; but on 
certain afternoons they might take the air 
and see visitors in the bleak and barren inclo- 
sure where they were now herded together. 

By common rumor in Brussels the Germans 
were shooting all persons caught secretly 
peddling copies of French or English papers 
or unauthorized and clandestine Belgian pa- 
pers; since only orthodox German papers were 
permitted to be sold. The Germans themselves 
took no steps to deny these stories, but in 
the prison we found a large collection of for- 
lorn newsdealers. Having been captured with 
the forbidden wares in their possession, they 
had mysteriously vanished from the ken of 
their friends; but they had not been "put 
against the wall," as they say in Europe. 
They had been given fourteen days apiece, 
with a promise of six months if they trans- 
gressed a second time. 

[403J 



PATHS OF GLORY 



One little man, with the longest and sleekest 
and silkiest black whiskers I have seen in many 
a day, recognized us as Americans and drew 
near to tell us his troubles in a confidential 
whisper. By his bleached indoor complexion 
and his manners anyone would have known 
him for a pastry cook or a hairdresser. A 
hairdresser he was; and in a better day than 
this, not far remote, had conducted a fash- 
ionable establishment on a fashionable boule- 
vard. 

"Ah, I am in one very sad state," he said 
in his twisted English. "I start for Ostend 
to take winter garments for my two small 
daughters, which are there at school, and 
they arrest me — these Germans — and keep me 
two days in a cowshed, and then bring me back 
here and put me here in this so-terrible-a-place 
for two weeks; and all for nothing at all." 

"Didn't you have a pass to go through the 
lines?" I asked. "Perhaps that was it." 

"I have already a pass," he said; "but 
when they search me they find in my pockets 
letters which I am taking to people in Ostend. 
I do not know what is in those letters. People 
ask me to take them to friends of theirs in 
Ostend and I consent, not knowing it is against 
the rule. They read these letters — the Ger- 
mans — and say I am carrying news to their 
enemies; and they become very enrage at me 
and lock me up. Never again will I take let- 
ters for anybody anywhere. 
[404] 



THE RAG DOLL OF EUROPE 



"Oh, sirs, if you could but see the food we 
eat here! For dinner we have a stew — oh, 
such a stew! — and for breakfast only bread 
and coffee who is not coffee!" And with both 
hands he combed his whiskers in a despair 
that was comic and yet pitiful. 

He was standing there, still combing, as we 
came away. 



[405] 



CHAPTER XVI 
LOUVAIN THE FORSAKEN 



IT was Sunday when I saw Louvain in the 
ashes of her desolation. We were just 
back then from the German trenches be- 
fore Antwerp; and the hollow sounds of 
the big guns which were fired there at spaced 
intervals came to our ears as we rode over the 
road leading out from Brussels, like the boom- 
ings of great bells. The last time I had gone 
that way the country was full of refugees 
fleeing from burning villages on beyond. Now 
it was bare, except for a few baggage trains 
lumbering along under escort of shaggy gray 
troopers. Perhaps I should say they were 
gray-and-yellow troopers, for the plastered 
mud and powdered dust of three months of 
active campaigning had made them of true 
dirt color. 

Oh, yes; I forgot one other thing: We over- 
took a string of wagons fitted up as carryalls 
and bearing family parties of the burghers to 
[406] 



LOUVAIN THE FORSAKEN 



Louvain to spend a day among the wreckage. 
There is no accounting for tastes. If I had been 
a Belgian the last thing I should want my 
wife and my baby to see would be the ancient 
university town, the national cradle of the 
Church, in its present state. Nevertheless 
there were many excursionists in Louvain that 
day. 

The Germans had taken down the bars 
and sight-seers came by autobusses from as 
far away as Aix-la-Chapelle and from Liege 
and many from Brussels. They bought postal 
cards and climbed about over the mountain 
ranges of waste, and they mined in the debris 
mounds for souvenirs. Altogether, I suppose 
some of them regarded it as a kind of picnic. 
Personally I should rather go to a morgue 
for a picnic than to Louvain as it looks to-day. 

I tried hard, both in Germany among the 
German soldiers and in Belgium among the 
Belgians, to get at the truth about Louvain. 
The Germans said the outbreak was planned, 
and that firing broke out at a given signal in 
various quarters of the town; that, from 
windows and basements and roofs, bullets 
rained on them; and that the fighting continued 
until they had smoked the last of the inhab- 
itants from their houses with fire and put them 
to death as they fled. The Belgians proclaimed 
just as stoutly that, mistaking an on marching 
regiment for enemies, the Germans fired on 
their own people; and then, in rage at having 
[4071 



PATHS OF GLORY 



committed such an error and to cover it up, 
they turned on the townspeople and mixed 
massacre with pillaging and burning for the 
better part of a night and a day. 

I could, I think, sense something of the 
viewpoint of each. To the Belgian, a German in 
his home or in his town was no more than an 
armed housebreaker. What did he care for 
the code of war? He was not responsible for 
the war. He had no share in framing the code. 
He took his gun, and when the chance came he 
fired — and fired to kill. Perhaps, at first, he 
did not know that by that same act he forfeited 
his life and sacrificed his home and jeopardized 
the lives and homes of all his neighbors. 
Perhaps in the blind fury of the moment he 
did not much care. 

Take the German soldier: He had proved 
he was ready to meet his enemy in the open 
and to fight him there. When his comrade 
fell at his side, struck down by an unseen, 
skulking foe, who lurked behind a hedge or 
a chimney, he saw red and he did red deeds. 
That in his reprisals he went farther than 
some might have gone under similar condi- 
tions is rather to have been expected. In point 
of organization, in discipline, and in the en- 
actment of a terribly stern, terribly deadly 
course of conduct for just such emergencies, 
his masters had gone farther than the heads 
of any modern army ever went before. You 
see, all the laboriously built-up ethics of 
J [408] 



LOUVAIN THE FORSAKEN 



civilized peace came into direct conflict with 
the bloody ethics of war, which are never civ- 
ilized, and which frequently are born in the 
instant and molded on the instant to suit the 
purposes of those who create them. And 
Louvain is perhaps the most finished and per- 
fect example we have in this world to-day to 
show the consequences of such a clash. 

I am not going to try to describe Louvain. 
Others have done that competently. The 
Belgians were approximately correct when 
they said Louvain had been destroyed. The 
Germans were technically right when they said 
not over twenty per cent of its area had been 
reduced; but that twenty per cent included 
practically the whole business district, practi- 
cally all the better class of homes, the univer- 
sity, the cathedral, the main thoroughfares, 
the principal hotels and shops and cafes. The 
famous town hall alone stood unscathed; it 
was saved by German soldiers from the com- 
mon fate of all things about it. What re- 
mained, in historic value and in physical 
beauty, and even in tangible property value, 
was much less than what was gone forever. 

I sought out the hotel near the station 
where we had stayed, as enforced guests of 
the German army, for three days in August. 
Its site was a leveled gray mass, sodden, 
wrecked past all redemption; ruined beyond 
all thought of salvage. I looked for the little 
inn at which we had dined. Its front wall 
[409] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



littered the street and its interior was a jumble 
of worthlessness. I wondered again as I had 
wondered many times before what had become 
of its proprietor — the dainty, gentle little 
woman whose misshapen figure told us she 
was near the time for her baby. 

I endeavored to fix the location of the little 
sidewalk cafe where we sat on the second or 
the third day of the German occupation — 
August twenty-first, I think, was the date — 
and watched the sun go out in eclipse like a 
copper disk. We did not know it then, but 
it was Louvain's bloody eclipse we saw pres- 
aged that day in the suddenly darkened 
heavens. Even the lines of the sidewalks 
were lost. The road was piled high with broken, 
fire-smudged masonry. The building behind 
was a building no longer. It was a husk of a 
house, open to the sky, backless and front- 
less, and fit only to tumble down in the next 
high wind. 

As we stood before the empty railroad 
station, in what I veritably believe to be the 
forlornest spot there is on this earth, a woman 
in a shawl came whining to sell us postal 
cards, on which were views of the desolation 
that was all about us. 

"Please buy some pictures," she said in 
French. "My husband is dead." 

"When did he die?" one of us asked. 

She blinked, as though trying to remember. 

"That night," she said as though there had 
[4101 



LOUVAIN THE FORSAKEN 



never been but one night. "They killed him 
then — that night." 

"Who killed him?" 

"They did." 

She pointed in the direction of the square 
fronting the station. There were German sol- 
diers where she pointed — both living ones and 
dead ones. The dead ones, eighty-odd of 
them, were buried in two big crosswise trenches, 
in a circular plot that had once been a bed of 
ornamental flowers surrounding the monu- 
ment of some local notable. The living ones 
were standing sentry duty at the fence that 
flanked the railroad tracks beyond. 

"They did," she said; "they killed him! 
Will you buy some postal cards, m'sieur? 
All the best pictures of the ruins!" 

She said it flatly, without color in her voice, 
or feeling or emotion. She did not, I am sure, 
flinch mentally as she looked at the Germans. 
Certainly she did not flinch visibly. She was 
past flinching, I suppose. 

The officer in command of the force holding 
the town came, just before we started, to 
warn us to beware of bicyclists who might 
be encountered near Tirlemont. 

"They are all franc-tireurs- — those Belgians 
on wheels," he said. "Some of them are 
straggling soldiers, wearing uniforms under 
their other clothes. They will shoot at you 
and trust to their bicycles to get away. We've 
caught and killed some of them, but there are 
[411] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



still a few abroad. Take no chances with 
them. If I were in your place I should be ready 
to shoot first." 

We asked him how the surviving populace 
of Louvain was behaving. 

"Oh, we have them — like that!" he said 
with a laugh, and clenched his hand up in a 
knot of knuckles to show what he meant. 
"They know better than to shoot at a Ger- 
man soldier now; but if looks would kill we'd 
all be dead men a hundred times a day." And 
he laughed again. 

Of course it was none of our business; but 
it seemed to us that if we were choosing a 
man to pacify and control the ruined people 
of ruined Louvain this square-headed, big- 
fisted captain would not have been our first 
choice. 

It began to rain hard as our automobile 
moved through the wreckage-strewn street 
which, being followed, would bring us to the 
homeward road — home in this instance mean- 
ing Germany. The rain, soaking into the 
debris, sent up a sour, nasty smell, which 
pursued us until we had cleared the town. 
That exhalation might fully have been the 
breath of the wasted place, just as the dis- 
tant, never-ending boom of the guns might have 
been the lamenting voice of the war-smitten 
land itself. 

I remember Liege best at this present dis- 
tance by reason of a small thing that occurred 
[412] 



LOUVAIN THE FORSAKEN 



as we rode, just before dusk, through a byway 
near the river. In the gloomy, wet Sunday 
street two bands of boys were playing at being 
soldiers. Being soldiers is the game all the 
children in Northern Europe have played since 
the first of last August. 

From doorways and window sills their 
lounging elders watched these Liege urchins 
as they waged their mimic fight with wooden 
guns and wooden swords; but, while we looked 
on, one boy of an inventive turn of mind was 
possessed of a great idea. He proceeded to 
organize an execution against a handy wall, 
with one small person to enact the role of the 
condemned culprit and half a dozen others to 
make up the firing squad. 

As the older spectators realized what was 
afoot a growl of dissent rolled up and down 
the street; and a stout, red-faced matron, 
shrilly protesting, ran out into the road and 
cuffed the boys until they broke and scattered. 
There was one game in Liege the boys might 
not play. 

The last I saw of Belgium was when I 
skirted her northern frontier, making for the 
seacoast. The guns were silent now, for 
Antwerp had surrendered; and over all the 
roads leading up into Holland refugees were 
pouring in winding streams. They were such 
refugees as I had seen a score of times before, 
only now there were infinitely more of them 
than ever before: men, women and children, 
[413] 



PATHS OF GLORY 



all afoot; all burdened with bags and bundles; 
all dressed in their best clothes — they did well 
to save their best, since they could save so 
little else — all or nearly all bearing their in- 
evitable black umbrellas. 

They must have come long distances; but 
I marked that none of them moaned or com- 
plained, or gave up in weariness and despair. 
They went on and on, with their weary backs 
bent to their burdens and their weary legs 
trembling under them; and we did not know 
where they were going — and they did not 
know. They just went. What they must face 
before them could not equal what they left 
behind them; so they went on. 

That poor little rag doll, with its head 
crushed in the wheel tracks, does not after all 
furnish such a good comparison for Belgium, 
I think, as I finish this tale; for it had saw- 
dust insides — and Belgium's vitals are the 
vitals of courage and patience. 



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Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: ^ m 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



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